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Eating Wonderland: Recent Work by Sue Johnson
University of Richmond Museums
Eating Wonderland: Recent Work by Sue Johnson
February 8 to June 15, 2008
Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature
Introduction
We very pleased to present the work of Maryland artist Sue Johnson at the Lora Robins Gallery of Design from Nature, University of Richmond Museums. The exhibition premieres recent ceramic work created by Johnson at the Arts/Industry residency program of the John Michael Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and funded by Kohler Company, Kohler, Wisconsin. This unique residency provides visiting artists the opportunity to learn techniques and work with materials and equipment in Kohler's pottery, iron, and brass foundries. Johnson's participation resulted in her "Incredible Edibles" series, which consists of ceramic castings of dinnerware and popular foodstuffs that focus on themes of food, consumption, marketing, and mass production.
Her accompanying eries of two-dimensional works on paper, "Episodes in a Fantastic Landscape," explores the creation and use of imagery in popular culture, the influence of context on these images, and how simple manipulations can result in humor, possible aversion, and complex commentaries on contemporary society. Finally, her more than sixteen-foot-wide painting on paper "New Stories from Wonderland (Life of the Dodo)," created specifically for this exhibition, merges all of these themes while including specific references to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and to current environmental issues.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition was curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University Museums, with assistance from the artist. The exhibition was made possible in part with funds from the University's Cultural Affairs Committee.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
This is War! The Pain, Power, and Paradox of Images
University of Richmond Museums
This is War! The Pain, Power, and Paradox of Images
October 5 to April 4, 2008
Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art and Print Study Center
Introduction
If "war is the father of all things," as the Greek philosopher Heraclitus lamented many centuries ago, then perhaps art is the mother. War continues to be a perennial subject in all of the arts, often symbolizing mortality and struggle and illustrating the triumphs and degradation of humanity. Our exhibition comes at a time when many museums are presenting war imagery in their galleries, from historical explorations to contemporary artists contending with the horrors of current wars. Heraclitus' statement seem to ring ever more true in our own disquieting times.
"This is War!" features works on paper selected from the collection of the Harnett Print Study Center. The prints, drawings, and photographs focus on war over many centuries and explore issues of war and peace as seen through the graphic arts, from the glory, heroism, and patriotism of war to its brutality, pity, and shame. Never has an exhibition been so difficult to contain, one battle leading to another, one war easily leading to another, one artist's powerful war imagery leading to other artists and their attempts to deal with the all-powerful "Mars His Idiot," the hideous god of war in Kerr Eby's symbolic print. The wars and battles are hard to quantify, the artists included range from the well-known to the unknown, the themes overlap, showing valor and patriotism, pity and ugliness, collateral damage of the innocent, and even satire and humor.
The extreme pain, power, and paradox of the images occur in the responses of artists to the wars that shaped their own lives and societies, and influence our lives and world today. What an enigma that the basest impulses of humanity can spark masterpieces and the highest creativity in visual artists! Highlights include the seminal war images of Callot (the complete set of his Miseries of War) and Goya, images of wars fought long ago (the Trojan War), America's Civil War, both World Wars, and today's wars. Photography is represented with grisly stereograph images of World War I and the destruction of World War II in vernacular snapshots and Gerhard Richter's reuse of an aerial reconnaissance image of the bombing of a bridge. The exhibition can only be incomplete, but the impact of the images strike home in intensity and intent, and in beauty. It looks at war and its aftermath in its many visual and emotional manifestations, from the heroic and uplifting to the atrocious and despicable.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition was curated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums, with assistance from Katie Der, '11, business administration and studio art double major, University of Richmond, and 2008 Harnett Summer Research Fellow. Special thanks goes to our perceptive "silent" curator, James Goodfriend, an extraordinarily knowledgeable print scholar and dealer. Not only has he contributed the essay in this brochure, he has over the past several years provided guidance and assurances along the way in developing the very concepts and difficult parameters of this timely project.
The exhibition is made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund and the support of the University's Cultural Affair Committee. It is part of the University's yearlong interdisciplinary focus, "Art & War," with events and programs scheduled throughout the 2008-2009 academic year and coordinated by the Modlin Center for the Arts. For more information, go to modlin.richmond.edu/artandwar.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
Ilgim Veryeri-Alaca: Recent Prints and Drawings
University of Richmond Museums
Ilgim Veryeri-Alaca: Recent Prints and Drawings
January 16 to March 25, 2007
Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art
Introduction
Most Turkish names have functional meanings. By an auspicious quirk of chance, occasionally by determinism, some names provide an apt characterization of the bearer's talents or personality. So it is with the artist llgim Veryeri-Alaca, whose given name signifies "mirage" and married name denotes "speckled" or "spectral." Her variegated pieces, embracing such norms and techniques as collage, lacework, engraving, ebru (marbled paper), and watercolor, wondrously integrate her Middle Eastern (or specifically Turkish) aesthetics with her mastery of Western craftsmanship.
Although the subtleties of her creative ventures tend to give an impression of elusiveness, her command of form, color, and dynamics is so firm that they have nothing tentative about them. Employing universal techniques as well, llgim Veryeri-Alaca reinvents the cultural essences and visual fascinations of the traditional arts of her native Turkey. In each one of her compelling compositions, a "mirage" reigns in splendor. Hers is the triumph of imagination seeking the permanency of the abstract. For art enthusiasts in Turkey and abroad, her powerful syntheses are a source of pride and joy.
Talat S. Halman
Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Letters Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey -
Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite
University of Richmond Museums
Leaded: The Materiality and Metamorphosis of Graphite
August 23 to September 30, 2007
Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art
Introduction
In a sense it is highly appropriate that a university museum organize an exhibition about graphite. After all, the pencil is one of the essential tools in foundation drawing classes. In fact the pencil is perhaps the most familiar of all tools to students taking their first steps at making art, as opposed to charcoal or chalk, or the brush loaded with oil or watercolor. To others, the pencil and the graphite it holds symbolize the essence of the creative act of drawing.
The elemental accessibility of graphite provides entree into much of the work in this exhibition, which ranges from intriguing experiments with the medium's metallic appearance to more conceptual examinations of written communication and language. Seen in totality, the art in Leaded allows us to look at this basic material in a new way, to appreciate its aesthetic versatility that finds resonance in the work of these artists. Here, as the title of the exhibition implies, graphite is seen in its materiality and its potential metamorphosis as a medium of art beyond drawing.
The exhibition was curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University of Richmond Museums, and organized for tour by International Arts and Artists, Washington, DC. At the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, the exhibition and programs were made possible in part with the generous support of the University's Cultural Affairs Committee.
We would like to thank the lenders to the exhibition as well as the artists and their galleries for their assistance in organizing this exhibition.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums
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Prints and the Courtly World of Mozart
University of Richmond Museums
Prints and the Courtly World of Mozart
January 28 to April 29, 2006
Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center
Introduction
In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (Austrian, 1756-1791), the exhibition explores the courtly world of the composer through prints of the period - from images of concerts and performances, to portraits of the composer, to scenes that capture the costumes and social mores of the day.
Selected from the collection of the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, artists include Johann Wolfgang Baumgartner (German, 1712-1761), François Boucher (French, 1703-1770), Jean Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732-1806), and Jean-Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), among others. The prints offer us a glimpse into the eighteenth-century aristocratic society that was Mozart's milieu.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition was co-curated by Charles Johnson, Professor of Art History, Emeritus, Department of Art and Art History, and Senior Fellow, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond, and Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums. The celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth is presented in collaboration with the Department of Music and the Modlin Center for the Arts, and the exhibition is made possible in part with the generous support of the University's Cultural Affairs Committee.
Happy Birthday, Wolfgang!
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
Pierre Daura, Catalan-American Modernist: People, Places, and Things
University of Richmond Museums
Pierre Daura, Catalan-American Modernist: People, Places, and Things
September 28 to December 11, 2005
Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art and Print Study Center
Introduction
Pierre Daura (American, born Spain, 1896 - 1976) was a member of a radical generation of artists who shaped the development of European modernism from the 1910s to the 1930s. The richness of his art reflects the diverse experiences of his life - growing up in Catalonia, Spain, maturing as an artist in Paris, moving to the small French village of Saint Cirq-Lapopie, participating in the Spanish Civil War, and finally relocating to Rockbridge Baths, Virginia. After settling in America during World War II, Daura focused his art on the landscape, still life, and the figure. Selected from a major gift to the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center from the artist's daughter, Martha Randolph Daura, the exhibition of drawings, watercolors, prints, and oil paintings highlights the major themes of Daura's long career as an artist.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition is presented concurrently in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art and the Print Study Center. Co-curators are Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums, and Bradley Jane Wright, '06, marketing major, University of Richmond, and 2005 Harnett Summer Research Fellow. As part of her fellowship and continuing research this semester, she has written the exhibition's extended labels and the essay in this brochure.
We thank Martha Randolph Daura for her generosity to the University Museums, and we are deeply grateful to her for this gift to our collection. Thomas Mapp has been truly helpful with this project, and we thank him.
With this generous donation, the Harnett Print Study Center is now a prominent repository of works by Pierre Daura, and we look forward to sharing his art with our students, scholars, and visitors. The exhibition is made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund and the support of the Daura Foundation.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums
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John Dos Passos and His World
University of Richmond Museums
John Dos Passos and His World
September 26 to December 07, 2003
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums
Introduction
One of America's most innovative writers, John Dos Passos (1896-1970) also completed more than four hundred paintings and drawings that chronicle his life's journeys. In fifty years, Dos Passos wrote forty-two literary works, and his novels Manhattan Transfer (1925) and the trilogy U.S.A. (published together in 1938) provide a panoramic social history of the first three decades of the twentieth century. Similarly, his paintings captured the times in which he lived and addressed the world around him, in landscapes from Manhattan, Mexico, and North Africa, portraits of friends and figure studies, and illustrations from plays and novels.
The intellectual and artistic development of Dos Passos was first nourished through his acquaintances with Picasso, Fernand Léger, and the Russian émigré Natalia Gontcharova. Included in our exhibition are artworks created for or given to the artist by his friends, such as Léger, Wood Gaylor, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and Waldo Peirce.
The exhibition is based on The Art of John Dos Passos, an exhibition organized and circulated by International Arts & Artists in conjunction with Lucy Dos Passos Coggin, the artist's daughter. Curators for the presentation at the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums, are Lucy Dos Passos Coggin and Welford Dunaway Taylor, Professor of English, The James A. Bostwick Chair of English, University of Richmond, with assistance from N.Elizabeth Schlatter, Assistant Director, University Museums. At the Marsh Art Gallery, University Museums, the exhibition is made possible in part with the generous support of the University's Cultural Affairs Committee. In particular, we would like to thank Lucy Dos Passos Coggin for her assistance.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
Why Draw a Landscape?: A Portfolio of Prints by Contemporary Artists
University of Richmond Museums
Why Draw a Landscape?: A Portfolio of Prints by Contemporary Artists
August 20 to December 7, 2003
Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center
Introduction
Why Draw a Landscape? features a portfolio of prints on the theme of landscape in contemporary art, commissioned by Crown Point Press in San Francisco and completed in 1999. Each of the eleven participating artists answered the question with a print that attests to the vitality of the natural world.
Collectively, this portfolio includes a diversity of artistic approaches, ranging from documentary accuracy, to expressive images, to abstraction in which areas of colors suggest the landscape. Each print is an etching, yet a wide variety of techniques are employed to convey the artist's vision. Upon closer investigation, the prints reveal myriad associations to the land and how we view ourselves within that context.
This exhibition has also provided the opportunity to highlight landscape prints from the museum's permanent collection. Ranging from a sixteenth-century woodcut to a twenty-first-century mezzotint, this selection reveals the rich history and variety of approaches to representing nature in art.
Organized by the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition was co-curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Assistant Director, University Museums, and Christopher Oliver (AR'05), art history major at the University of Richmond and the 2003 Harnett Summer Fellow. The project was a major part of Chris's summer fellowship in the Harnett Print Study Center. He was responsible for the essay and other material included in this brochure and for researching and writing the text on the extended labels in the exhibition.
We would like to thank the many donors who have generously given several of these prints to the University Museums and a special thanks to Joel (RC'45) and Lila Harnett, not only for their ongoing generosity to the University of Richmond but specifically for funding Christopher Oliver's 2003 summer fellowship.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums
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Reginald Marsh Prints: Whitney Museum of American Art Portfolio, Part Two
University of Richmond Museums
Reginald Marsh Prints: Whitney Museum of American Art Portfolio, Part Two
January 8 to June 29, 2002
Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center
Introduction
It is only fitting that this two-part, yearlong inaugural exhibition for the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center feature one of America's most important artists whose talents were honed during the 1920s and 1930s, a period when American printmaking experienced a surge in popularity. Reginald Marsh (1898-1954) created images that revealed the society and tempo of his environment and his time, and he was considered a Social Realist along with such artists as Isabel Bishop and Raphael Soyer.
This exhibition, like the Print Study Center itself, would not be possible without the generous and continued support of Joel and Lila Harnett. The portfolio, on loan from the collection of the Harnetts, was published in 1969 by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. It contains thirty prints by Reginald Marsh from 1930 to 1943, the second fifteen of which are included in this exhibition. The first half were featured in the Harnett Print Study Center from September 23 to December 16, 2001.
The Harnett Print Study Center extends the University of Richmond Museums' mission to provide a forum for the study and appreciation of the visual arts. The Center serves the University's students, faculty, and staff, as well as the greater Richmond area and national and international audiences. The 1,200-square-foot facility houses works on paper in the collection of the University Museums and allows students and visitors the opportunity to study these objects more closely.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums
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American Prints from the 1920s and 1930s: Selections from the Permanent Collection
University of Richmond Museums
American Prints from the 1920s and 1930s: Selections from the Permanent Collection
February 20 to March 25, 2001
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond MuseumsIntroduction
American printmaking experienced a surge in popularity during the 1920s and 1930s, when many artists began looking to their own environments as subject matter. Urban and country life, realistic or idealized, appeared in the work of Social Realist and Regionalist artists. Their images were used as illustrations for novels, poetry, short stories and advertisements. Influential to the style and quality of printmaking at this time was the immigration of artists from Europe. Of the nine printmakers represented in this exhibition, three were born abroad and one spent his childhood in Germany before returning to America in the late 1930s. Their origins are as varied as their media - etching, aquatint, wood engraving, and woodcut.
We would like to thank the many donors who generously gave these prints, woodblocks, and books to the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums. Thanks also goes to Dr. Welford Dunaway Taylor who lent advertisement tear sheets featuring a few of Rockwell Kent's images. The exhibition was co-curated by N . Elizabeth Schlatter, Assistant Director of University Museums, and Meg McLemore (AW 'O 1 ), on art history and studio art major.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
Origin Stories: Creation Narratives in Australian Aboriginal Art
University of Richmond Museums
Origin Stories: Creation Narratives in Australian Aboriginal Art
September 26 to December 9, 2001
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
The Kluge-Ruhe Collection provides an incredibly valuable resource for people in Virginia and throughout the country to study and appreciate some of the most interesting and exciting work being created today - contemporary Australian Aboriginal art.
John Kluge of Virginia began collecting Aboriginal art in 1987, and in 1993 he purchased the collection of Professor Edward L. Ruhe of the University of Kansas, Lawrence. With a mission to educate the American public about Aboriginal art, the Kluge-Ruhe Collection was formed in 1997 when Kluge generously donated the work to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
We are grateful to the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection for lending us this exhibition. Our presentation of Origin Stories is based on a larger version, which was organized by Margo Smith, Curator of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection, in the spring of this year. At the Marsh Art Gallery, the exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee and the Office of International Education.
Richard Waller
Executive Director
University of Richmond Museums -
Senior Thesis Exhibition 2000
University of Richmond Museums
Senior Thesis Exhibition 2000
April 13 to May 06, 2000
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
The senior thesis exhibition is the capstone experience for graduating studio art majors in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Richmond.
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Erling Sjovold: Recent Paintings
University of Richmond Museums
Erling Sjovold: Recent Paintings
October 16 to December 11, 1999
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Erling Sjovold's exhibition features his recent watercolors and oil paintings, works where the artist's desire to "slow down time" for reflection is the basis for images that even include the element of time as subject matter, both literally and figuratively. Like many artists that are described as "second sight artists," he creates images that require careful looking beyond the surface realism, works that do not reveal their full statements at first sight. His paintings are rich with layers of meaning that lead the viewer to deeper contemplation of the natural world and its phenomena, including light, a sense of place, and the passage of time.
While his watercolors of the landscape appear more straightforward in the plein-air method of painting, the images in his oil paintings of the still life and landscape are a complex mixture of observation and fabrication. The artist explains that he chooses his "subjects for both their formal characteristics and their symbolic content." Blending, or bending, perceived reality with the impact of abstract form and structure to achieve a heightened reality, he imbues ordinary, commonplace objects with metaphysical overtones by placing them in extra-ordinary situations.
In these recent paintings, the artist investigates the psychologically-laden terrain of nature and natural objects combined with the objects and settings of humanity; often he brings the two genres of painting, still life and landscape, together in his simultaneously real and surreal images. His highly-charged compositions are about an environment that is both representational and metaphorical, a place where the artist juxtaposes intriguing objects and invites us to explore the possible meanings we might find there.
This fall semester, we welcome Erling Sjovold to the faculty of the University of Richmond as assistant professor of art, and this exhibition of his paintings introduces his creativity as an artist to our university and the Richmond community.
Richard Waller
Executive Director, University Museums, and Director, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond -
Looking at the Visual: Art as Object, Art as Experience
University of Richmond Museums
Looking at the Visual: Art as Object, Art as Experience
October 16 to December 11, 1999
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
How do you read a painting? A sculpture? A print? Can they be studied the way that we study books? We live in a very visual culture, but we seldom study why a particular form, color, or image has an effect upon us. Visual art has a language, or series of languages, just like written texts. The languages can be more immediate than words, and they can tell us things about ourselves, the world around us, imaginary and supernatural worlds, and even tell stories. This exhibition includes works from many time periods and cultures in order to explore artistic languages, and to ask questions for reflection and discussion.
The exhibition is about both the process of making art and the experience of looking at art. The exhibition centers on the idea that "looking" is a deliberate act, that an understanding of the visual language artists use to make works of art and to direct meaning is essential to this process oflooking. The role cultural formation plays in both the creation of works of art and their reception is of particular interest in this context, as is the question of the viewer's freedom to interpret.
Divided into four themes, the exhibition explores: "Visual Language" which has the nude as its subject, "Representing the Natural World" focuses on the conventions of landscape, "Representing the lmagined World" includes both spiritual and other-world images, and "Visual Narratives" investigates explicit and suggested story-telling. The exhibition ends with "Abstraction" serving as a coda to the four main themes.
This exhibition is presented in conjunction with the required year-long course, titled "Exploring Human Experience," taken in the first year by every University of Richmond student. Referred to as the Core Course, it is considered a foundation course and is based primarily on books and texts from a range of cultures, disciplines, and historical periods. The course also embraces other avenues of intellectual inquiry through music, film, and art; and this exhibition has been developed to demonstrate how art is a vital part of exploring fundamental issues of human experience. Organized around themes and topics to be covered in depth by our students and faculty involved in this course, the intention is to present visual objects as comparative texts for discussion and encourage the "reading" and analyzing of works of art just as written texts are studied and interpreted.
Organized by the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums, the exhibition is co-curated by Stephen Addiss, Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History, and Margaret Fields Denton, Associate Professor of Art History, both of the University of Richmond. The exhibition is made possible with the generous support of The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation and the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee.
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Senior Thesis Exhibition 1999
University of Richmond Museums
Senior Thesis Exhibition 1999
April 15 to May 08, 1999
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
The senior thesis exhibition is the capstone experience tor graduating studio art majors in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Richmond.
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Anthony Panzera: The Big Picture, Life-Size Scrolls and Drawings
University of Richmond Museums
Anthony Panzera: The Big Picture, Life-Size Scrolls and Drawings
January 28 to March 6, 1998
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums
Introduction
Anthony Panzera's remarkable series of monumental scrolls and drawings of the nude is impressive in its scale and startling in its immediacy. Large and beautiful, the life-size drawings present a contemporary perspective that carries forward a genre of drawing with a long and rich tradition.
The nude figure is an aesthetic theme of endless variation and can be traced to the very beginnings of art. The desire to depict the human form has been the source of inspiration for much of the world's great art. Panzera's drawings are deeply rooted in traditions which value the nude as the culmination of beauty. The artist's connection with the classical past, particularly the great masters of the Renaissance, is very obvious. Yet the scale and method of presentation of his drawings bring something very original and contemporary to this classical tradition.
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Art of the Scholar-Poets: Traditional Chinese Painting and Calligraphy
University of Richmond Museums
Art of the Scholar-Poets: Traditional Chinese Painting and Calligraphy
April 01 to May 09, 1998
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums
Introduction
Chinese culture developed one of the world's most enduring artistic traditions, literati painting, based upon a unique idea about the purposes of art. The art of the scholar-poets is centered in calligraphy and poetry, which the literati learned at an early age as part of their basic education. Painting was done with the same tools as poetry and calligraphy - brush, ink, and paper - and it was an easy step to express poetic sensibilities in visual as well as verbal form. Most literati, either government bureaucrats or teachers, were not dependent upon their art for their living which allowed them a freedom to express themselves in the arts without worries about commercial success.
The exhibition explores the Chinese literati tradition of expressing perceptions of nature and personal feelings through calligraphy, painting, and poetry from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries in the formats of hanging scrolls, fans, handscrolls, and albums, The works are arranged in the favored themes of the literati: bamboo, landscapes, figure, and calligraphy.
Organized by the Marsh Art Gallery, the exhibition was curated by Stephen Addiss, Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History, University of Richmond. The exhibition brochure essay, panels, and labels were developed by Dr. Addiss' students as part of an art history course on Chinese painting and calligraphy. The students were: Scott Allen, Sean Drummond, Ann Griffin, Mark Karau, Blythe King, Sarah Mendelson, John Nixon, Liz Rhymers, and Beth Rose. For help with translations, we would like to thank Jonathan Chaves (Wen Cheng-ming and Ch'eng Hsieh), Julia Curtis (brushpot), and Stephen Little (Hsiao Yung-ts'ung). Our thanks also go to the lenders to the exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the Rouse-Bottom Foundation and the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee.
Richard Waller
Director, Marsh Art Gallery
University of Richmond -
Interiors: Recent Paintings by Duane Keiser
University of Richmond Museums
Interiors: Recent Paintings by Duane Keiser
February 26 to April 04, 1998
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Duane Keiser's exhibition features his recent oil paintings dealing with interiors. Evoking the psychological intensity we often feel when we find ourselves alone inside silent architectural spaces, whether domestic or public, his paintings investigate this "intimacy of the room." Although devoid of people, his interiors are very much about the people who inhabit these seemingly ordinary spaces, about the haunting presence of humanity that remains, even as we catch tantalizing glimpses of the world outside. His paintings elicit our own experiences of such spaces, and we sense, much as the poet Tristan Tzara wrote, "A slow humility penetrates the room / That dwells in me in the palm of repose."
Our thanks go first of all to the artist, Duane Keiser, who is an adjunct assistant professor of art at the University of Richmond. His enthusiasm and unstinting involvement throughout the entire project are deeply appreciated.
At the University of Richmond, our special acknowledgment goes to Dr. Richard L. Morrill, President; Dr. Zeddie P. Bowen, Vice President and Provost; and Dr. David E. Leary, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences; for their continuing support and encouragement oi lhe visual arts through the Marsh Art Gallery's exhibitions and programs. Special thanks go to the staff of the Gallery: Douglas Satteson, Exhibitions Coordinator; Lynda Brown; and our student workers. Appreciation also goes to our colleagues in the Department of Art and Art History.
We are extremely indebted to all the lenders, who were so graciously willing to part with works from their collections for this exhibition.
The exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee and an anonymous donor.
Richard Waller
Director, Marsh Art Gallery
University of Richmond -
Robert Motherwell on Paper: Gesture, Variation, and Continuity
University of Richmond Museums
Robert Motherwell on Paper: Gesture, Variation, and Continuity
October 17 to December 13, 1997
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Abstract art is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure, a process of emphasis. - Robert Motherwell
The renowned Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), best known as a painter, produced a remarkable body of works on paper. His drawings, prints, and collages show an intimate side of his visual sensibility and reveal the very personal "handwriting" of the artist as he responded to the subtleties of paper, both as a medium and a material.
The exhibition is divided into eleven themes or sections, and organized around serial creation, such as his "Lyric Suite" series, and thematic continuities, as seen in his well-known "elegies" motif. Motherwell's works on paper demonstrate the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration. The works present the artist's creative gesture in its various manifestations, as immediate impulse, as dialectic response, and as deliberate variation.
This exhibition guide and extended copy on the wall labels were developed as part of an art history course, "The Modern in America," taught during the 1997 Fall Semester at the University of Richmond by Stephen Addiss, Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History. Dr. Addiss' students researched and worked on this brochure and selected the quotes used in the brochure and on the exhibition labels. The students were: Scott S. Allen, Mott Avitable, Maggie Brining, Henry Chong, Fiona Howl, Mark Karau, Annie Lipscomb, Karen Morgan, Johnny Nixon, Diana Thompson Vincelli, Joseph L. Winland, Jr., and Christy Yarnell.
The exhibition is organized and circulated by the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, and curated by David Rosand. At the Marsh Art Gallery, the exhibition is made possible with the generous support of the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee.
Richard Waller
Director, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond
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Haiga: Takebe Sōchō and the Haiku-Painting Tradition
University of Richmond Museums
Haiga: Takebe Sōchō and the Haiku-Painting Tradition
March 3 to April 16, 1995
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
There is an old saying in Japan that "the nail that sticks out gets banged down." This shows how the Japanese tend to perceive themselves in a social context, as opposed to Western individualist perceptions. Japanese society is seen as a community of human relationships; its performance depends critically upon the quality of these relationships. Therefore, Japanese are constantly trying to reach a harmonious balance between individual aspirations and social responsibilities.
There is great admiration in Japan for the balance which is evident in nature between constraint and freedom. Their search for tills equilibrium on the human level is evident throughout Japanese society and cultural activities. The works displayed in this exhibition show great freedom of emotional expression, yet they are created within a long-standing tradition that portrays the ideal harmonious relationship between humans and nature.
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Reconstructions: The Video Image Outside of Time
University of Richmond Museums
Reconstructions: The Video Image Outside of Time
November 08 to December 17, 1995
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Co-organized by the Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, the exhibition is traveling throughout the Commonwealth through the Virginia Museum's Department of Traveling Exhibitions and Media Services (Eileen Mott. Statewide Exhibition Coordinator) following its venue at the Marsh Art Gallery (November 8 to December 17, 1995).
The exhibition, Reconstructions, The Video Image Outside of Time (1994), comprises a continuously-running single-channel videotape and twenty-seven photographs. All the photographs are Cibachrome prints, 8 x 10 inches, printed from slides generated from computer-manipulated digital files that were created on the computer directly from the videotape. All the works are from the collection of the artist.
Accompanying the exhibition is a compilation tape of seven single-channel videotapes by the artist: Fragments of India, 1993 (8 minutes); Folded Follies, 1993 (8.5 minutes); Space Splice, 1994 (12 minutes); Inside, 1986 (4.5 minutes); Space-Time Loops: Cityscape, 1988 (8 minutes); Reconstruction, 1992 (6.5 minutes); and Bindu, 1993 (6.5 minutes). The videotapes are courtesy of and distributed by The Kitchen, New York.
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Daniel Serra-Badué: Dreamt Reality
University of Richmond Museums
Daniel Serra-Badué: Dreamt Reality
1994
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
Daniel Serra-Badué is an artist of uncompromising vision who dwells upon memory as if it were tangible. "All that we see or seem - Is but a dream within a dream," wrote Edgar Allan Poe , and Serra-Badué seeks to place his audience within that dream. His evocative images compel us toward experiences that combine described reality with surreal impossibilities and dreamlike remembrances. Serra-Badué's world is a world of dreamt reality.
The lithographs in this exhibition, ranging in date from 1964 to 1992, demonstrate Serra-Badué's mastery of clarity of line, exactitude of form, and precisely modulated tonality. The artist has stated, "The sobriety of this medium seems to reflect more accurately something that is more remembered than seen; it pretends to synthesize the context of tropical opulence in spare symbol of its existence. After all, a construction is always an anchor that helps find what we are in the receding tides of what we recall." Serra-Badué limits himself to a linear, monochromatic use of lithography in his carefully executed compositions. His approach heightens our awareness of the levels that lie just beneath the surface of things as they appear in the real world.
Serra-Badué was influenced by Surrealism early in his life, and he continues to find inspiration in the ideas first put forth by that art movement. The Surrealists were intrigued with depicting seemingly contradictory states of being, such as dreaming and waking, in images that went beyond reality, or were surreal. Serra-Badué elegantly achieves this visual surrealism. His work puts the viewer into a real place, yet contrasting elements turn this place into an enigmatic world. Normal expectations are suspended by encounters with an imprisoned shopping bag, an impossible step, a newspaper about to be run over by a trolley, or a musical instrument attempting to fly to the moon. Dynamic shafts of light impose abstract forms on realistic street scenes, breaking the illusion; decorative grillwork takes on an obsessive personality, revealing and simultaneously obscuring our view; shadows are as palpable as the objects they delineate. "Nothing is more surreal than reality," notes the artist. Serra-Badué reveals the mysterious and the sensuous in the realities that surround us every day.
Scenes of his birthplace, Santiago de Cuba, are a recurring theme in Serra-Badué's work; the city's architecture and atmosphere are redolent with memories of things past. Founded in 1514, Santiago is one of the oldest Spanish colonial cities in the New World. When Winslow Homer visited there in 1885, he wrote that Santiago "is certainly the richest field for an artist that I have ever seen," and he produced a beautiful series of watercolors depicting street scenes. The city remains a rich field for Serra-Badué as well, and we sense in these lithographs his love for the streets and houses of his youth.
For Daniel Serra-Badué, physical architecture holds "metaphysical levels that do not exclude but, on the contrary, make visible my central motivation for their realization: the desire of concretizing elusive remembrances." For us, his haunting images of human experience - whether dreamt reality or realized dreams - have an engaging surrealism that relentlessly draws us toward an inner reality.
Richard Waller
Director
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond -
Ephraim Rubenstein: The Rilke Series
University of Richmond Museums
Ephraim Rubenstein: The Rilke Series
January 28 to February 27, 1994
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction: Rilke and Rubenstein
The first time I met Ephraim Rubenstein, some eight years ago, and looked at his early paintings I immediately sensed a powerful poetic quality coming out of his paintbrush. This ambitious exhibition not only confirms my initial feeling, but surpasses anything I could have thought of at that time. It is rare these days to find a young artist inspired, not by pop culture or the mass media, but by a classic of literature. I find it interesting and refreshing to see such good work deriving out of one of this century's greatest European poets, Rainer Maria Rilke.
One of my favorite analogies in describing a great artist is to compare him or her to a priest, a nun, or a rabbi. God speaks through these religious leaders to nourish us, the parishioners, with his spirit. I have seen a few moments like that take place during my forty-three years of running a contemporary gallery. The story as to how Rilke started the Duino Elegies is legendary. As Rilke walked along the Duino Castle in Trieste, a strong wind whipped by and whispered the first lines to him. Truly a case of God speaking through an artist. This collection of paintings and drawings makes me think of Ephraim Rubenstein in a similar manner.
The works are beautiful visual complements to the words of Rilke's poetry. Each of these two have concerned themselves with two important themes: truth and harmony. And though these goals are shared, their specific results may be different. Rubenstein's landscapes are of the area he now knows best: Richmond, Virginia. Rubenstein's figures do not wear turn-of-the-century outfits, but contemporary clothing. His work also has a quiet contemplative mood, perhaps best personified by The Sap is Mounting Back or the rose still lifes which were painted in a quiet corner of his city home.
As the animals gathered around Orpheus to listen to him play music and sing, now let us gather around Ephraim Rubenstein's paintings and drawings.
Tibor de Nagy
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J.J. Lankes (1884-1960): Woodcuts of Rural America
University of Richmond Museums
J.J. Lankes (1884-1960): Woodcuts of Rural America
1994
Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond Museums
Introduction
In 1917, while working at the Newton Arms Company factory in Buffalo, New York, Julius John (J. J.) Lankes created his first woodcut. His only implements were a graver, used to score rifle stocks, and a block of apple wood he had cut from a fallen tree. The experiment proved a turning point in the life of the thirty-one-year-old laborer, draftsman, and erstwhile art student. Rapidly mastering the difficult white on black woodcutting technique, he went on to produce some 1,300 designs over the next forty years.
J. J. Lankes moved to Virginia in 1925. His artistic interests were ideally suited to the depiction of the landscape and houses of rural Tidewater Virginia in the 1920s. He saw in these deteriorating buildings the erosion by time and nature on man and his monuments. Lankes found and recorded, in its unretouched condition, a Williamsburg of decaying eighteenth-century structures together with more stately edifices. In virtually all his images, nature is a strong, often controlling, presence: beneath the surface of the natural object, it lurks as a mysterious, perhaps hostile, force. Generally, we are reminded of the power and endurance of nature, beside which man and his creations are shown as insignificant and transitory.
Lankes' major subject was pre-industrial America, rich in natural beauty, history, and sturdy people who bonded with the land. In his life as in his work Lankes remained a democrat -- a scoffer at pretension, a skeptic of entrenched authority, champion of the plain, and respecter of the natural. These values, combined with extraordinary technical skills, won praise from such notable contemporaries as John Taylor Arms, Charles Burchfield, Rockwell Kent, Ray Nash, Charles Harris Whitaker, and Carl Zigrosser. Several of these artists helped pave Lankes' way as an illustrator of books by prominent authors of the 1920s and '30s, most notably Sherwood Anderson, Roark Bradford, Robert P. Tristram Coffin, Robert Frost, and Ellen Glasgow.
Today, Lankes' woodcuts remain evocative representations of American rural life of an earlier time. His unique vision is evident in this retrospective, which includes works ranging in date from 1917 to 1955. Carl Zigrosser wrote in 1942, "his woodcuts are of the country, and have the smell and feel of the country in them." We not only perceive Lankes' contribution to "American scene" printmaking but also take delight in his vision of early twentieth-century America and of universal themes.
But one should bear in mind that however lofty the larger themes of his work may be, Lankes' approach to art was primarily specific and not theoretical. Thus his more expansive ideas are to be inferred. As Sherwood Anderson observed in ''J.J. Lankes and His Woodcuts" (1931), Lankes "is a man deeply concerned with life, but it is his way to get at life through things. He feels always the reflected life in things, in barns, sheds back of barns, in little houses in which poor people live. 'Look,' he says. 'Look again. Don't you see it? .. . Life is here in these inanimate things people have touched."'
The "things" subsumed in these images reflect a broad and richly detailed spectrum. They range from historical figures and buildings to rural domestic life; from the seasons to commonplace natural objects; from literature to plowing; from Buffalo, New York, to the lower Chesapeake Bay; from the James River to the stars. The sheer variety of these subjects defies neat summarization; each image conveys a unique message. However all of them, to borrow a phrase from Gray's Elegy, are "short and simple annals" evoking a rural past that has all but disappeared.
Welford Dunaway Taylor
James A. Bostwick Professor of English, University of RichmondRichard Waller
Director, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond -
Ukiyo-e: Japanese Prints of the Floating World
University of Richmond Museums
Ukiyo-e: Japanese Prints of the Floating World
March 3 to April 17, 1994
Marsh Art Gallery
Introduction
This ukiyo-e exhibition reveals the tantalizing range of images in Japanese prints of the floating world. A seventeenth-century Japanese writer described that world as: "singing songs, drinking wine, and diverting ourselves just in floating, floating ... like a gourd with the river current." Reflecting a sense of the world as an ephemeral place of no lasting value, the floating world was an escape from the present into fantasy and pleasure. Hopefully, our exhibition will entice you to pursue your own escape into that floating world.
Organized by the Marsh Art Gallery, the exhibition was co-curated by Robert G. Sawers, Director, Robert G. Sawers Gallery, London, and Stephen Addiss, Tucker-Boatwright Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Art History, University of Richmond. The exhibition was developed as part of an art history course on Japanese prints; Dr. Addiss' students researched and collectively wrote this brochure essay and individually wrote the exhibition's descriptive labels. The students were: Christopher Brown, Benjamin Chadwick, Inga Clough. Amy Dukes, Kristina Furse, Karen Gover, Wynn Housel, Laurie Linder, Edward O'Brien, Pamela Purdy, Elizabeth Rowe, Kirsten Schutt, Myres Tilghman, Eric Townsend, and Jennifer Wilkins.
We extend special thanks to the co-curators and the students involved in this project. Thanks also go to Mr. Sawers for lending the prints for our exhibition. The exhibition was made possible with the generous support of the University of Richmond Cultural Affairs Committee.
Richard Waller
Director, Marsh Art Gallery, University of Richmond
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