Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Bruce Nauman
Bruce Nauman was born December 6, 1941, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He studied art, mathematics, and physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1960 to 1964. He went on to study under William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California at Davis, graduating with an M.F.A. in 1966. In 1964, Nauman gave up painting and began experimenting with sculpture and Performance art and collaborated with William Allan and Robert Nelson on film projects. He supported himself teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968, and again at the University of California at Irvine, in 1970.
Since the mid-1960s, the artist has created an open-ended body of work that includes sculptures, films, holograms, interactive environments, neon wall reliefs, photographs, prints, sculptures, videotapes, and performance. His Conceptual work stresses meaning over aesthetics; it often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about existence and alienation, and increasingly it provokes the viewer’s participation and dismay.
In 1966, the Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, held Nauman’s first solo exhibition. In 1968, the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, initiated a long series of solo shows. Also in 1968, he was invited for the first time to participate in Documenta in Kassel, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that enabled him to work in New York for one year. In 1972, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work, which traveled in Europe and the United States. Nauman moved to New Mexico in 1979. A major retrospective was held at the Rijksmuseum Króller-Müller, Otterlo, and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, in 1981. Since the mid-1980s, primarily working with sculpture and video, he has developed disturbing psychological and physical themes with imagery based on animal and human body parts.
Nauman has received many honors, including an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989, the Max Beckmann Prize in 1990, the Wolf Prize in Arts-Sculpture in 1993, and the Wexner Prize in 1994. The most recent Nauman retrospective was organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and traveled to many venues throughout America and Europe from 1993 to 1995. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.
A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s
Others have written about Bruce Nauman's Northern California years, but this exhibition and its accompanying catalog are the first to explore in depth Nauman's relationship to the place where he created his earliest and often most innovative works. Between 1964, when he arrived in Northern California, and 1969, when he left the area definitively, Nauman established much of his artistic vocabulary. He explored new, untested materials in his early fiberglass and rubber sculptures, as well as the methodology that became known as Post-minimal. He was also among the first to use his body as an expressive instrument in live performance and in his classic studio performances made for film and video, and was among the pioneers of the latter form. His search for new means and sources of expression led him to experiment with neon in sign-like reliefs, to make interactive installations, and to explore the relationship between words and images. He also made his first strictly sound piece during this time.
As a graduate student at UC Davis (1964–66), Nauman studied with Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Arneson, and William Wiley. Wiley was especially sensitive and receptive to Nauman's unconventional approach to artmaking. He encouraged Nauman to experiment and, following his own example, not to worry about the final appearance of a work. To this day, Nauman takes a piece as far as he needs to in order to do the job—surface refinement is superfluous.
Nauman had arrived in California in 1964 already possessed of many of the ingredients that were to nourish his art—a grounding in mathematics, science, philosophy, and music, for example—as well as a solid moral sense and, most importantly, a keen and curious mind. Once in California, Nauman not only observed what was happening in visual art on the West Coast and beyond through publications and contact with visiting artists at UC Davis, but drew information from the Bay Area's vibrant new dance and music scenes. Literature (Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Malcolm Lowry, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, in particular) and Gestalt psychology also played into his artmaking.
Many of the themes and subjects that appear in Nauman's work to this day can be found in some of his very earliest works, including in a group of sketches that he left behind in his graduate studio that have only recently come to light. These include the artist's studio as a site; the relationship of sculpture to its physical environment; fountains, stairs, and chairs as metaphor; wordplay (encouraged by Wiley and Arneson); the inversion of exterior and interior; the tension between exposure and concealment; and the art potential of ordinary activities. Most important, though, are the fundamental themes he addresses throughout his oeuvre—the role of the artist, the function of art, and the primacy of the idea over whatever form it takes—that define his work and profoundly influence artists all over the world.
Because it seemed to exemplify many aspects of his philosophy, I named this show A Rose Has No Teeth after the eponymous work, an embossed lead plaque, which Nauman made in 1966 when he was only twenty-four years old. The piece is at once a commentary on traditional outdoor sculpture, which Nauman found uninspiring, and a reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein's language theory as put forth in Philosophical Investigations, from which the phrase derives. The artist intended the plaque to be affixed to a tree where, over time, it would disappear as the bark grew over it. As Nauman sees it, more typical outdoor sculpture, large and ambitious as it might be, can never compete with the scale and grandeur of nature itself. Not surprisingly, given his intelligence and range, Nauman was able, in this unprepossessing work, to raise fundamental questions about both art and language.
Nauman, although geographically removed from the centers of Conceptual art activity, was in the forefront of the revolutionary changes taking place in art and almost single-handedly redefined what it meant to be an artist. Even as a graduate student, Nauman demonstrated a precociousness and originality that made adventurous curators and dealers take notice. He had his first major solo show at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles in 1966 just before receiving his master's degree, and by 1969 was exhibiting with the leading galleries for vanguard art—Leo Castelli in New York and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf. He was included in virtually all the early landmark Post-minimal and Conceptual art exhibitions; in 1972 a survey of his work was co-organized by Jane Livingston at the Los Angeles County Museum and Marcia Tucker at the Whitney Museum of American Art, an unusual tribute to such a young artist.
Co-published by BAM/PFA and UC Press, the catalog that accompanies the exhibition contains important essays by UC Berkeley art historian Anne Wagner, art historian and curator Robert Storr, and media curator and critic Robert Riley, along with my essay tracing the development of Nauman's work of the late 1960s.
Bruce Nauman wins Praemium Imperiale Award 7 June 2004
The American artist Bruce Nauman was named a winner yesterday of a $135,000 Praemium Imperiale award for sculpture. Other winners of the awards, given annually by the Japan Arts Association to recognize lifetime achievement in arts categories not recognized by the Nobel Prizes, were Georg Baselitz of Germany for painting, Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil for architecture, Krzysztof Penderecki of Poland for music and Abbas Kiarostami of Iran for film. In addition, the Young Sound Forum of Central Europe, a contemporary-music orchestra, was awarded a $45,000 Grant for Young Artists.
BRUCE NAUMAN
Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since the mid-1960's he has created a far-ranging body of work that underlines his determination to describe the human condition in all its contradictions. His conceptual work stresses meaning over form and often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about alienation. Like many of his peers in the 1960's, Nauman was expanding artistic practice by introducing performance into his work, moving away from static objects to create an art of experience. The performance-based works offer investigations of our most basic physical emotions and psychological states. Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists today and has set standards both in the diversity of his artistic means and the breadth of his concerns.
Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light
Bruce Nauman deals with the big questions of life, in the words of his 1983 neon: Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain. Nauman's work focuses on the essential elements of the human experience. Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light, premiering at the Milwaukee Art Museum January 28 – April 9, is Nauman's first solo exhibition in Wisconsin, the state in which he was raised. Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of America's most innovative and provocative contemporary artists.
Bruce Nauman works in diverse media; this exhibition focuses solely on light. Light offered Nauman a medium that has the quality of being both elusive and effervescent while aggressively pervading an environment with its message. Nauman's art is motivated by ideas, not an attachment to a particular medium. Through the use of neon signs, a public and familiar means of communication to relate an idea, Nauman's goal is to make the viewer think. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman noted, "he inspires reverence, or loathing…It's hard to feel indifferent to work like his."
"This exhibition is all about the visitor's experience," said Joseph D. Ketner II, Milwaukee Art Museum chief curator and curator of the exhibition. "Visitors will walk into a darkened gallery full of neon signs and fluorescent light environments. They'll experience a disorientation of light and space, just as Nauman intended."The exhibition is divided into three sections, split by two fluorescent light environments (a room and a corridor). The sections are: early neons based on identity, word game neons and figurative neons. There are approximately 15 works in the exhibition.
The first section in the exhibition features Nauman's early neons on the subject of identity. Working in his first professional studio, the neon beer signs in the shop fronts of his San Francisco neighborhood intrigued Nauman, who became determined to subvert the commercial purpose of the advertisements. In response, the artist created Window or Wall Sign (1967) and hung it in the window of his storefront studio. With this piece he sought to achieve "an art that would kind of disappear – an art that was supposed to not quite look like art." Nauman then embarked on a series of neons that grapple with questions of identity. Interested in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and building upon his early performance works, the artist produced Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals (1966) as an innovative exercise in portraiture as sculpture. With My Name As Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon (1968) he forces the viewer to contemplate a signature as the object of art.
Two fluorescent light environments divide the exhibition's three sections. The rooms force the viewer into tight or oblique spaces with harsh lighting effects that heighten the perception of space. The two works are the Helman Gallery Parallelogram (1971), a green fluorescent light room, and the Corridor with Mirror and White Lights (1971), through which the viewer must pass, providing spatial counterpoints to the neon signs.
Language, signs and symbols make up the second section. Nauman's work in neon during the 1970s emphasizes the neon as a sign, presenting provocative twists of language. He was acutely aware of the confrontational potential of neon when exhibited in a museum or gallery and offered harsh and humorous socio-political commentary in such pieces as Raw War (1970) and Run from Fear, Fun from Rear (1972). This series culminates in the monumental, billboard-scaled One Hundred Live and Die (1984). His largest and most complex piece neon, Nauman employs overwhelming scale to bombard the viewer with sardonic aphorisms.
In the third and final section of the exhibition, Nauman explores the pictographic potential of the medium for image-based signs. Hanged Man (1985) makes a playful reference to the children's word game while providing a biting criticism of human rights abuses then in South America and Southeast Asia. With these neons, Nauman acknowledges the great power of images to convey ideas.
Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941. He grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1964. His father worked for General Electric and the family moved often. Some of his family still lives in Wisconsin. Bruce Nauman currently lives in New Mexico.
A 96-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with images of 75 Nauman works. In incisive essays, Joseph Ketner II, chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Janet Kraynak, a New York based art historian, and critic Gregory Volk analyze and interpret these works in light.
The exhibition is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum's new chief curator Joseph D. Ketner II. The exhibition is sponsored by Carlene and Andy Ziegler. After its debut at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Elusive Signs travels to Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, N. Miami (2006); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington (2007); Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal (2007); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Victoria (2007); and Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2008).
Bruce Nauman was born December 6, 1941, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He studied art, mathematics, and physics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison from 1960 to 1964. He went on to study under William T. Wiley and Robert Arneson at the University of California at Davis, graduating with an M.F.A. in 1966. In 1964, Nauman gave up painting and began experimenting with sculpture and Performance art and collaborated with William Allan and Robert Nelson on film projects. He supported himself teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1966 to 1968, and again at the University of California at Irvine, in 1970.
Since the mid-1960s, the artist has created an open-ended body of work that includes sculptures, films, holograms, interactive environments, neon wall reliefs, photographs, prints, sculptures, videotapes, and performance. His Conceptual work stresses meaning over aesthetics; it often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about existence and alienation, and increasingly it provokes the viewer’s participation and dismay.
In 1966, the Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles, held Nauman’s first solo exhibition. In 1968, the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, and the Galerie Konrad Fischer, Düsseldorf, initiated a long series of solo shows. Also in 1968, he was invited for the first time to participate in Documenta in Kassel, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that enabled him to work in New York for one year. In 1972, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, organized the first solo museum exhibition of the artist’s work, which traveled in Europe and the United States. Nauman moved to New Mexico in 1979. A major retrospective was held at the Rijksmuseum Króller-Müller, Otterlo, and the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, in 1981. Since the mid-1980s, primarily working with sculpture and video, he has developed disturbing psychological and physical themes with imagery based on animal and human body parts.
Nauman has received many honors, including an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1989, the Max Beckmann Prize in 1990, the Wolf Prize in Arts-Sculpture in 1993, and the Wexner Prize in 1994. The most recent Nauman retrospective was organized by the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and traveled to many venues throughout America and Europe from 1993 to 1995. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.
A Rose Has No Teeth: Bruce Nauman in the 1960s
Others have written about Bruce Nauman's Northern California years, but this exhibition and its accompanying catalog are the first to explore in depth Nauman's relationship to the place where he created his earliest and often most innovative works. Between 1964, when he arrived in Northern California, and 1969, when he left the area definitively, Nauman established much of his artistic vocabulary. He explored new, untested materials in his early fiberglass and rubber sculptures, as well as the methodology that became known as Post-minimal. He was also among the first to use his body as an expressive instrument in live performance and in his classic studio performances made for film and video, and was among the pioneers of the latter form. His search for new means and sources of expression led him to experiment with neon in sign-like reliefs, to make interactive installations, and to explore the relationship between words and images. He also made his first strictly sound piece during this time.
As a graduate student at UC Davis (1964–66), Nauman studied with Wayne Thiebaud, Robert Arneson, and William Wiley. Wiley was especially sensitive and receptive to Nauman's unconventional approach to artmaking. He encouraged Nauman to experiment and, following his own example, not to worry about the final appearance of a work. To this day, Nauman takes a piece as far as he needs to in order to do the job—surface refinement is superfluous.
Nauman had arrived in California in 1964 already possessed of many of the ingredients that were to nourish his art—a grounding in mathematics, science, philosophy, and music, for example—as well as a solid moral sense and, most importantly, a keen and curious mind. Once in California, Nauman not only observed what was happening in visual art on the West Coast and beyond through publications and contact with visiting artists at UC Davis, but drew information from the Bay Area's vibrant new dance and music scenes. Literature (Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov, Malcolm Lowry, and Alain Robbe-Grillet, in particular) and Gestalt psychology also played into his artmaking.
Many of the themes and subjects that appear in Nauman's work to this day can be found in some of his very earliest works, including in a group of sketches that he left behind in his graduate studio that have only recently come to light. These include the artist's studio as a site; the relationship of sculpture to its physical environment; fountains, stairs, and chairs as metaphor; wordplay (encouraged by Wiley and Arneson); the inversion of exterior and interior; the tension between exposure and concealment; and the art potential of ordinary activities. Most important, though, are the fundamental themes he addresses throughout his oeuvre—the role of the artist, the function of art, and the primacy of the idea over whatever form it takes—that define his work and profoundly influence artists all over the world.
Because it seemed to exemplify many aspects of his philosophy, I named this show A Rose Has No Teeth after the eponymous work, an embossed lead plaque, which Nauman made in 1966 when he was only twenty-four years old. The piece is at once a commentary on traditional outdoor sculpture, which Nauman found uninspiring, and a reference to Ludwig Wittgenstein's language theory as put forth in Philosophical Investigations, from which the phrase derives. The artist intended the plaque to be affixed to a tree where, over time, it would disappear as the bark grew over it. As Nauman sees it, more typical outdoor sculpture, large and ambitious as it might be, can never compete with the scale and grandeur of nature itself. Not surprisingly, given his intelligence and range, Nauman was able, in this unprepossessing work, to raise fundamental questions about both art and language.
Nauman, although geographically removed from the centers of Conceptual art activity, was in the forefront of the revolutionary changes taking place in art and almost single-handedly redefined what it meant to be an artist. Even as a graduate student, Nauman demonstrated a precociousness and originality that made adventurous curators and dealers take notice. He had his first major solo show at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles in 1966 just before receiving his master's degree, and by 1969 was exhibiting with the leading galleries for vanguard art—Leo Castelli in New York and Konrad Fischer in Düsseldorf. He was included in virtually all the early landmark Post-minimal and Conceptual art exhibitions; in 1972 a survey of his work was co-organized by Jane Livingston at the Los Angeles County Museum and Marcia Tucker at the Whitney Museum of American Art, an unusual tribute to such a young artist.
Co-published by BAM/PFA and UC Press, the catalog that accompanies the exhibition contains important essays by UC Berkeley art historian Anne Wagner, art historian and curator Robert Storr, and media curator and critic Robert Riley, along with my essay tracing the development of Nauman's work of the late 1960s.
Bruce Nauman wins Praemium Imperiale Award 7 June 2004
The American artist Bruce Nauman was named a winner yesterday of a $135,000 Praemium Imperiale award for sculpture. Other winners of the awards, given annually by the Japan Arts Association to recognize lifetime achievement in arts categories not recognized by the Nobel Prizes, were Georg Baselitz of Germany for painting, Oscar Niemeyer of Brazil for architecture, Krzysztof Penderecki of Poland for music and Abbas Kiarostami of Iran for film. In addition, the Young Sound Forum of Central Europe, a contemporary-music orchestra, was awarded a $45,000 Grant for Young Artists.
BRUCE NAUMAN
Bruce Nauman was born in 1941 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Since the mid-1960's he has created a far-ranging body of work that underlines his determination to describe the human condition in all its contradictions. His conceptual work stresses meaning over form and often uses irony and wordplay to raise issues about alienation. Like many of his peers in the 1960's, Nauman was expanding artistic practice by introducing performance into his work, moving away from static objects to create an art of experience. The performance-based works offer investigations of our most basic physical emotions and psychological states. Bruce Nauman is one of the most influential artists today and has set standards both in the diversity of his artistic means and the breadth of his concerns.
Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light
Bruce Nauman deals with the big questions of life, in the words of his 1983 neon: Life, Death, Love, Hate, Pleasure, Pain. Nauman's work focuses on the essential elements of the human experience. Elusive Signs: Bruce Nauman Works with Light, premiering at the Milwaukee Art Museum January 28 – April 9, is Nauman's first solo exhibition in Wisconsin, the state in which he was raised. Bruce Nauman has been recognized since the early 1970s as one of America's most innovative and provocative contemporary artists.
Bruce Nauman works in diverse media; this exhibition focuses solely on light. Light offered Nauman a medium that has the quality of being both elusive and effervescent while aggressively pervading an environment with its message. Nauman's art is motivated by ideas, not an attachment to a particular medium. Through the use of neon signs, a public and familiar means of communication to relate an idea, Nauman's goal is to make the viewer think. New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman noted, "he inspires reverence, or loathing…It's hard to feel indifferent to work like his."
"This exhibition is all about the visitor's experience," said Joseph D. Ketner II, Milwaukee Art Museum chief curator and curator of the exhibition. "Visitors will walk into a darkened gallery full of neon signs and fluorescent light environments. They'll experience a disorientation of light and space, just as Nauman intended."The exhibition is divided into three sections, split by two fluorescent light environments (a room and a corridor). The sections are: early neons based on identity, word game neons and figurative neons. There are approximately 15 works in the exhibition.
The first section in the exhibition features Nauman's early neons on the subject of identity. Working in his first professional studio, the neon beer signs in the shop fronts of his San Francisco neighborhood intrigued Nauman, who became determined to subvert the commercial purpose of the advertisements. In response, the artist created Window or Wall Sign (1967) and hung it in the window of his storefront studio. With this piece he sought to achieve "an art that would kind of disappear – an art that was supposed to not quite look like art." Nauman then embarked on a series of neons that grapple with questions of identity. Interested in the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein and building upon his early performance works, the artist produced Neon Templates of the Left Half of My Body Taken at Ten-Inch Intervals (1966) as an innovative exercise in portraiture as sculpture. With My Name As Though It Were Written on the Surface of the Moon (1968) he forces the viewer to contemplate a signature as the object of art.
Two fluorescent light environments divide the exhibition's three sections. The rooms force the viewer into tight or oblique spaces with harsh lighting effects that heighten the perception of space. The two works are the Helman Gallery Parallelogram (1971), a green fluorescent light room, and the Corridor with Mirror and White Lights (1971), through which the viewer must pass, providing spatial counterpoints to the neon signs.
Language, signs and symbols make up the second section. Nauman's work in neon during the 1970s emphasizes the neon as a sign, presenting provocative twists of language. He was acutely aware of the confrontational potential of neon when exhibited in a museum or gallery and offered harsh and humorous socio-political commentary in such pieces as Raw War (1970) and Run from Fear, Fun from Rear (1972). This series culminates in the monumental, billboard-scaled One Hundred Live and Die (1984). His largest and most complex piece neon, Nauman employs overwhelming scale to bombard the viewer with sardonic aphorisms.
In the third and final section of the exhibition, Nauman explores the pictographic potential of the medium for image-based signs. Hanged Man (1985) makes a playful reference to the children's word game while providing a biting criticism of human rights abuses then in South America and Southeast Asia. With these neons, Nauman acknowledges the great power of images to convey ideas.
Bruce Nauman was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana in 1941. He grew up in Milwaukee and graduated from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1964. His father worked for General Electric and the family moved often. Some of his family still lives in Wisconsin. Bruce Nauman currently lives in New Mexico.
A 96-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition, with images of 75 Nauman works. In incisive essays, Joseph Ketner II, chief curator of the Milwaukee Art Museum, Janet Kraynak, a New York based art historian, and critic Gregory Volk analyze and interpret these works in light.
The exhibition is organized by the Milwaukee Art Museum's new chief curator Joseph D. Ketner II. The exhibition is sponsored by Carlene and Andy Ziegler. After its debut at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Elusive Signs travels to Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, N. Miami (2006); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington (2007); Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal (2007); Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Victoria (2007); and Queensland Art Gallery, Australia (2008).
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Robert Morris
b. 1931, Kansas City, Mo.
Born February 9, 1931, in Kansas City, Missouri, Robert Morris turned to art and art criticism after studying engineering, eventually writing a 1966 master’s thesis on Constantin Brancusi at Hunter College, New York. Since then, Morris has continued to write influential critical essays, four of which serve as a thumbnail chronology of his most important work: task-oriented dance (“Some Notes on Dance,” 1965), Minimalist sculpture (“Notes on Sculpture,” 1968), Process art (“Anti Form,” 1968), and Earthworks (“Aligned with Nazca,” 1975).
During the 1950s, Morris grew interested in dance while living in San Francisco with his wife, the dancer and choreographer Simone Forti. After moving to New York in 1959, they participated in a loose-knit confederation of dancers known as the Judson Dance Theater, for which Morris choreographed a number of works, including Arizona (1963), 21.3 (1964), Site (1964), and Waterman Switch (1965).
During the 1960s and 1970s, Morris played a central role in defining three principal artistic movements of the period: Minimalist sculpture, Process Art, and Earthworks. In fact, Morris created his earliest Minimalist objects as props for his dance performances—hence the rudimentary wooden construction of these boxlike forms, which reflected the Judson Dance Theater’s emphasis on function over expression. Morris exhibited entire rooms of these nondescript architectural elements at the Green Gallery, New York, in 1964 and 1965. In the latter half of the 1960s, Morris explored more elaborate industrial processes for his Minimalist sculpture, using materials such as aluminum and steel mesh. Like these industrial fabrications, a series of Neo-Dada sculptures Morris created in the 1960s also challenged the myth of artistic self-expression. These included ironic “self-portraits” consisting of sculpted brains and electroencephalogram readouts as well as other works directly inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s quasiscientific investigations of perception and measurement.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the rigid plywood and steel of Morris’s Minimalist works gave way to the soft materials of his experiments with Process Art. Primary among these materials was felt, which Morris piled, stacked, and hung from the wall in a series of works that investigated the effects of gravity and stress on ordinary materials. A variety of these felt works were shown in 1968 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Subsequent projects Morris made during the late 1960s and early 1970s included indoor installations of such unorthodox materials as dirt and threadwaste, which resisted deliberate shaping into predetermined forms, and monumental outdoor Earthworks. Since the 1970s, Morris has explored such varied mediums as blindfolded drawings, mirror installations, encaustic paintings, and Hydrocal and fiberglass castings, on themes ranging from nuclear holocaust to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.
Numerous museums have hosted solo exhibitions of his work, including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970, the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in 1986, and Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1990. In 1994, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. The artist lives in New York City and Gardiner, New York.
b. 1931, Kansas City, Mo.
Born February 9, 1931, in Kansas City, Missouri, Robert Morris turned to art and art criticism after studying engineering, eventually writing a 1966 master’s thesis on Constantin Brancusi at Hunter College, New York. Since then, Morris has continued to write influential critical essays, four of which serve as a thumbnail chronology of his most important work: task-oriented dance (“Some Notes on Dance,” 1965), Minimalist sculpture (“Notes on Sculpture,” 1968), Process art (“Anti Form,” 1968), and Earthworks (“Aligned with Nazca,” 1975).
During the 1950s, Morris grew interested in dance while living in San Francisco with his wife, the dancer and choreographer Simone Forti. After moving to New York in 1959, they participated in a loose-knit confederation of dancers known as the Judson Dance Theater, for which Morris choreographed a number of works, including Arizona (1963), 21.3 (1964), Site (1964), and Waterman Switch (1965).
During the 1960s and 1970s, Morris played a central role in defining three principal artistic movements of the period: Minimalist sculpture, Process Art, and Earthworks. In fact, Morris created his earliest Minimalist objects as props for his dance performances—hence the rudimentary wooden construction of these boxlike forms, which reflected the Judson Dance Theater’s emphasis on function over expression. Morris exhibited entire rooms of these nondescript architectural elements at the Green Gallery, New York, in 1964 and 1965. In the latter half of the 1960s, Morris explored more elaborate industrial processes for his Minimalist sculpture, using materials such as aluminum and steel mesh. Like these industrial fabrications, a series of Neo-Dada sculptures Morris created in the 1960s also challenged the myth of artistic self-expression. These included ironic “self-portraits” consisting of sculpted brains and electroencephalogram readouts as well as other works directly inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s quasiscientific investigations of perception and measurement.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, the rigid plywood and steel of Morris’s Minimalist works gave way to the soft materials of his experiments with Process Art. Primary among these materials was felt, which Morris piled, stacked, and hung from the wall in a series of works that investigated the effects of gravity and stress on ordinary materials. A variety of these felt works were shown in 1968 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, New York. Subsequent projects Morris made during the late 1960s and early 1970s included indoor installations of such unorthodox materials as dirt and threadwaste, which resisted deliberate shaping into predetermined forms, and monumental outdoor Earthworks. Since the 1970s, Morris has explored such varied mediums as blindfolded drawings, mirror installations, encaustic paintings, and Hydrocal and fiberglass castings, on themes ranging from nuclear holocaust to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations.
Numerous museums have hosted solo exhibitions of his work, including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art in 1970, the Art Institute of Chicago in 1980, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art in 1986, and Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art in 1990. In 1994, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, organized a major retrospective of the artist’s work, which traveled to the Deichtorhallen in Hamburg and the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris. The artist lives in New York City and Gardiner, New York.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Galerie Lelong
www.galerielelong.com
www.galerie-lelong.com
Galerie Lelong, New York is part of an international network of galleries in New York, Paris and Zurich. The gallery's program in New York is focused on contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and installations, made by a diverse group of artists from the United States, Europe and Latin America. The program includes a concentration of contemporary sculptors such as Petah Coyne, Andy Goldsworthy, Jaume Plensa and Ursula von Rydingsvard as well as artists who are critically engaged with contemporary culture such as Alfredo Jaar, Cildo Meireles, Nancy Spero and Krzysztof Wodiczko. The gallery represents the Estate of Ana Mendieta and the Estate of Hélio Oiticica.
Galerie Lelong in Paris and Zurich have a rich history in presenting many of the key modernists of the 20th Century such as Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Eduardo Chillida, Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies. This history continues through the 21st Century with the work of David Hockney, Jannis Kounellis, and Sean Scully.
The gallery is an active publisher of contemporary prints, multiples and books, including artists' writings and catalogue raisonnes.
ShadowWorks by Richard Artschwager, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy,Catherine Lee, Dorothy Napangardi, and Kate Shepherd
Also on view: Sean Scully: Aran Islands
June 28 – August 3, 2007opening reception: Thursday, June 28, 6 to 8 pm
Shadow, a group show with works by Richard Artschwager, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy, Catherine Lee, Dorothy Napangardi, and Kate Shepherd will open to the public on June 28, 2007. The works in the exhibition, while differing in medium, date and form, all share an interest in shifting impressions of light, shadow and fluidity. The exhibition will remain on view through August 3.
Richard Artschwager is one of the iconic post-war American artists. His heterogeneous body of work draws from eclectic sources and investigates unusual materials. On view is the trompe l'oeil Dame Redend (Speaking Woman), composed mainly of rubberized hair. Petah Coyne is represented by an earlier work from the ‘80s. Known for richly layered installations with wax, silk flowers, and taxidermy, among other materials, her sculptures have an anthropomorphic presence. The work featured in Shadow is directly figural, and its use of steel and organza is unique among the artist's works. Angelo Filomeno contributes a monumental painting, entitled Coat of Arms with a Skull (after Albrecht Durer engraving). The painting is made with painstaking embroidery of silver thread and Swarovski crystals, which allow the image to appear and disappear. Andy Goldsworthy scratches a white line across grey slate, combining drawing and sculpture in the work Drawn Slate. The grid-based "mark" paintings made by Catherine Lee in the ‘70s also relate to the line and underlie her interest in rhythm and gesture, still a hallmark of her contemporary sculpture. Made on raw linen attached to the wall with grommets, the paintings are a calligraphic record of her working process. From the Northern Territory of Australia, Aboriginal artist Dorothy Napangardi will show two paintings of her delicate and intimate patterns of lines and dots that evoke journeys and the forging of paths. Finally, Kate Shepherd's featured painting interprets the building as cage, her line shifting between actual and imagined structures.
On view in the small gallery is Sean Scully: Aran Islands, a portfolio of 24 black-and-white photographs taken by the artist in the group of islands off the west coast of Ireland. Renowned primarily for his paintings, Scully's photography is an ongoing area of his practice and exploration. Scully visited the islands in 2005 and was drawn to the tightly clustered stone walls that meander over the land. Known for his usage of color, he chose black-and-white film for the Aran Island works, emphasizing the structure and surface. The photographs on view appear in the book Sean Scully: Walls of Aran, published in the UK in May by Thames and Hudson and to be released in the U.S. this September.
www.galerielelong.com
www.galerie-lelong.com
Galerie Lelong, New York is part of an international network of galleries in New York, Paris and Zurich. The gallery's program in New York is focused on contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and installations, made by a diverse group of artists from the United States, Europe and Latin America. The program includes a concentration of contemporary sculptors such as Petah Coyne, Andy Goldsworthy, Jaume Plensa and Ursula von Rydingsvard as well as artists who are critically engaged with contemporary culture such as Alfredo Jaar, Cildo Meireles, Nancy Spero and Krzysztof Wodiczko. The gallery represents the Estate of Ana Mendieta and the Estate of Hélio Oiticica.
Galerie Lelong in Paris and Zurich have a rich history in presenting many of the key modernists of the 20th Century such as Francis Bacon, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Eduardo Chillida, Joan Miro and Antoni Tapies. This history continues through the 21st Century with the work of David Hockney, Jannis Kounellis, and Sean Scully.
The gallery is an active publisher of contemporary prints, multiples and books, including artists' writings and catalogue raisonnes.
ShadowWorks by Richard Artschwager, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy,Catherine Lee, Dorothy Napangardi, and Kate Shepherd
Also on view: Sean Scully: Aran Islands
June 28 – August 3, 2007opening reception: Thursday, June 28, 6 to 8 pm
Shadow, a group show with works by Richard Artschwager, Petah Coyne, Angelo Filomeno, Andy Goldsworthy, Catherine Lee, Dorothy Napangardi, and Kate Shepherd will open to the public on June 28, 2007. The works in the exhibition, while differing in medium, date and form, all share an interest in shifting impressions of light, shadow and fluidity. The exhibition will remain on view through August 3.
Richard Artschwager is one of the iconic post-war American artists. His heterogeneous body of work draws from eclectic sources and investigates unusual materials. On view is the trompe l'oeil Dame Redend (Speaking Woman), composed mainly of rubberized hair. Petah Coyne is represented by an earlier work from the ‘80s. Known for richly layered installations with wax, silk flowers, and taxidermy, among other materials, her sculptures have an anthropomorphic presence. The work featured in Shadow is directly figural, and its use of steel and organza is unique among the artist's works. Angelo Filomeno contributes a monumental painting, entitled Coat of Arms with a Skull (after Albrecht Durer engraving). The painting is made with painstaking embroidery of silver thread and Swarovski crystals, which allow the image to appear and disappear. Andy Goldsworthy scratches a white line across grey slate, combining drawing and sculpture in the work Drawn Slate. The grid-based "mark" paintings made by Catherine Lee in the ‘70s also relate to the line and underlie her interest in rhythm and gesture, still a hallmark of her contemporary sculpture. Made on raw linen attached to the wall with grommets, the paintings are a calligraphic record of her working process. From the Northern Territory of Australia, Aboriginal artist Dorothy Napangardi will show two paintings of her delicate and intimate patterns of lines and dots that evoke journeys and the forging of paths. Finally, Kate Shepherd's featured painting interprets the building as cage, her line shifting between actual and imagined structures.
On view in the small gallery is Sean Scully: Aran Islands, a portfolio of 24 black-and-white photographs taken by the artist in the group of islands off the west coast of Ireland. Renowned primarily for his paintings, Scully's photography is an ongoing area of his practice and exploration. Scully visited the islands in 2005 and was drawn to the tightly clustered stone walls that meander over the land. Known for his usage of color, he chose black-and-white film for the Aran Island works, emphasizing the structure and surface. The photographs on view appear in the book Sean Scully: Walls of Aran, published in the UK in May by Thames and Hudson and to be released in the U.S. this September.
Sunday, July 8, 2007
The FLOMENHAFT Gallery History
www.flomenhaftgallery.com
The Flomenhaft Gallery is part of Eleanor and Leonard Flomenhaft’s plan for a new chapter in their lives. Eleanor and Leonard are both stockbrokers. Eleanor is also an art historian. Their purpose is to divest themselves of a portion of their art collection and use the resources to display artists to the public who are well known to the museum community, but could benefit from the Flomenhafts’ enthusiasm and expertise.
The art was accumulated according to the interests of Eleanor Flomenhaft as a curator and director of a museum and her husband Leonard, who has a recognized fine eye. Eleanor curated many exhibits for The Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, the Montclair Art Museum and the Neuberger Purchase Art Museum. Currently she is curating an exhibit, “Women Only,” which will travel to seven museums. Exhibits she organized traveled throughout the United States, to the Saint Petersburg State Museum and The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia, to the Netherlands and to several cities in Japan. She has juried many exhibits including the Central American Biennale and has been interviewed numerous times on the radio and television. She has written extensively on contemporary art and wrote the first book in the English language on CoBrA art, the abstract expressionist art of post World War II Europe. Works by Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Romare Bearden, Beverly Buchanan, Eugene Brands, Eric Bulatov, Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Heerup, Carl Henning Pedersen, Faith Ringgold, Pat Steir and Carrie Mae Weems are just a few excellent work at the gallery.
Artists represented are: Emma Amos, Joan Barber, Paul Brach, Neil Folberg, Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin, Mira Lehr, Dina Recanati, Miriam Schapiro, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick to see Smith, Linda Stein and Flo Oy Wong. The Gallery is in a refurbished building in Chelsea and consists of two spaces, one for exhibiting current shows and the other which is called the “Flomenhaft Gallery Annex” for viewing works by artists when not on exhibit.
www.flomenhaftgallery.com
The Flomenhaft Gallery is part of Eleanor and Leonard Flomenhaft’s plan for a new chapter in their lives. Eleanor and Leonard are both stockbrokers. Eleanor is also an art historian. Their purpose is to divest themselves of a portion of their art collection and use the resources to display artists to the public who are well known to the museum community, but could benefit from the Flomenhafts’ enthusiasm and expertise.
The art was accumulated according to the interests of Eleanor Flomenhaft as a curator and director of a museum and her husband Leonard, who has a recognized fine eye. Eleanor curated many exhibits for The Emily Lowe Gallery, Hofstra University, the Fine Arts Museum of Long Island, the Montclair Art Museum and the Neuberger Purchase Art Museum. Currently she is curating an exhibit, “Women Only,” which will travel to seven museums. Exhibits she organized traveled throughout the United States, to the Saint Petersburg State Museum and The State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia, to the Netherlands and to several cities in Japan. She has juried many exhibits including the Central American Biennale and has been interviewed numerous times on the radio and television. She has written extensively on contemporary art and wrote the first book in the English language on CoBrA art, the abstract expressionist art of post World War II Europe. Works by Karel Appel, Pierre Alechinsky, Romare Bearden, Beverly Buchanan, Eugene Brands, Eric Bulatov, Alexander Calder, Jean Dubuffet, Henry Heerup, Carl Henning Pedersen, Faith Ringgold, Pat Steir and Carrie Mae Weems are just a few excellent work at the gallery.
Artists represented are: Emma Amos, Joan Barber, Paul Brach, Neil Folberg, Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin, Mira Lehr, Dina Recanati, Miriam Schapiro, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick to see Smith, Linda Stein and Flo Oy Wong. The Gallery is in a refurbished building in Chelsea and consists of two spaces, one for exhibiting current shows and the other which is called the “Flomenhaft Gallery Annex” for viewing works by artists when not on exhibit.
Thursday, July 5, 2007
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