Archive for the ‘Famous Artists’ Category

Anthony Van Dyck, Betrayal of Christ

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The Anthony Van Dyck, Betrayal of Christ was exhibited in our museum? We had the pleasure of exhibiting the painting for 16 years and thousands of people have seen on display. The museum is closed and we plans to relocate soon. The Van Dyck was on loan to us is not owned by the National Museum of Catholic Art and History  but by one private collector. As we have cared for and loved this painting the owner has taken it back for a short time until we relocate. We hope to have it back when we can announce our new headquarters. We want to thank this private collector for loaning it to us for such a long time. We plan to update that information shortly.

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ARTIST GEORGIA O’KEEFFE

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Artist Profile

Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986) was an internationally admired modern painter whose extraordinary career spanned seven decades. Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, O’Keeffe studied at the Chicago Art Institute and the Art Students League in New York, worked briefly as a commercial artist in the Chicago fashion industry, and became a teacher.

A summer course at the University of Virginia in 1912 turned the young teacher in a new direction by exposing her to the innovative ideas of art educator Arthur Wesley Dow. Inspired by Dow’s theories, O’Keeffe returned to her original goal of becoming a professional artist. She alternated during the next few years between teaching and periods of formal study and artistic experimentation.

In January 1916, a friend showed O’Keeffe’s abstract charcoal drawings to photographer and modern art impresario Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited them in his Manhattan gallery that spring, at a time when O’Keeffe was once again studying in New York. O’Keeffe taught in Texas for another two years and then rejoined Stieglitz in New York in June 1918. The two married in 1924.

O’Keeffe began spending her summers in the American Southwest in 1929, and eventually purchased a home in New Mexico. She moved to New Mexico permanently a few years after Stieglitz died in 1946. Georgia O’Keeffe continued to travel and paint until her death in 1986 at the age of 98.

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GEORGIA O’KEEFFE AT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION IN DC

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction 
(February 6-May 9, 2010)

Although painter Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), a central figure in 20th-century art, is best known for simplified images of recognizable objects, her contributions to American abstraction over the course of her long career were radical. Her approach-in paintings, drawings, and watercolors-was determined in 1915, when she decided that her art would record her feelings, rather than the appearance of things. For the remainder of her career, she looked to art, whether abstract or objective, to express emotions for which words seemed inadequate.In her first abstractions, a series of non-objective charcoal drawings, O’Keeffe reduced her palette to black and white. She filled her compositions with fluid, curvilinear forms reminiscent of Art Nouveau. In 1916, responding to the elemental landscape of western Texas, O’Keeffe reintroduced color into her watercolors. By magnifying and tightly cropping her images, a framing device used by photographers, she found the means to express simultaneously the vastness of nature, the immensity of her own response to it, and a powerful sense of being one with it. Two years later, seeking recognition as a painter in the circle of modern art dealer and photographer Alfred Stieglitz, she moved to New York and took up oils again.

Unwelcome critical interpretations of her work as expressive of her sexuality and a limited market for abstraction led O’Keeffe to turn away from pure abstraction in the 1920s and 1930s. After 1923, she rarely showed her early abstractions. Indeed, between 1935 and 1941, she produced no abstractions at all. Beginning in 1929, O’Keeffe spent long stretches of time in New Mexico, finally moving there in 1949. It proved to be an inexhaustible source of subjects for her mature works. She approached these as she had her most abstract works, through her feelings, using many of the same stylistic means. As she said, “I had to create an equivalent for what I felt about what I was looking at-not copy it.”Likely stung when critic Clement Greenberg trounced her in 1940 for having chosen representation over abstraction, O’Keeffe returned to it in1942, painting forms she found in the natural world that corresponded to abstract forms in her imagination. With the market more receptive to abstract art, she began to exhibit her abstractions again. By the late 1950s and 1960s she was working almost exclusively in an abstract style, in mural-sized aerial views of clouds and a minimalist, geometric series of patio door paintings. The fields of color of her radical late works set a precedent for a younger generation of abstract artists in the 1960s.

Included in the exhibition are more than 100 paintings, drawings, and watercolors by O’Keeffe, dating from 1915 to the late 1970s, and 12 photographic portraits of her by her husband, Alfred Stieglitz. 

Georgia O’Keeffe, Jack-in-the-Pulpit No. IV, 1930. Image courtesy of the Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

 

Georgia O’Keeffe, Music, Pink and Blue No. 2, 1918. © Georgia O’Keeffe Museum/Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York Photograph by Sheldan C. Collins

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Michelangelo Exhibit In the Seattle Art Museum

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

For Immediate Release

Contact: Nicole Griffin, SAM Public Relations
(206) 654-3158; email: PR [at] SeattleArtMuseum [dot] org

Seattle Art Museum is the only U.S. Venue for Michelangelo Drawings from Florence

Exhibition reveals a side of the master artist that he never wanted the public to see.

Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti
October 15, 2009–January 31, 2010

SEATTLE, August 31, 2009 – Michelangelo’s towering reputation as the quintessential Renaissance man — architect, painter, sculptor, poet and engineer — intimidated both his contemporaries and later historians to the point that the adjective “divine” became a fixture attached to his name. Bringing together drawings and sculptural models by Michelangelo with a range of works by his contemporaries and generations of followers, Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti is a small but powerful exhibition that humanizes the great master, exposing the working process that led to masterpieces such as the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes. Organized by the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), the exhibition’s only venue, in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, Italy,Michelangelo Public and Private will show a side of this unequivocal master that he never wanted the public to see. The exhibition will be on view October 15, 2009–January 31, 2010.

“The Casa Buonarroti houses the greatest repository of Michelangelo’s drawings in the world, and it has been such a pleasure and an honor to work with them,” said Chiyo Ishikawa, SAM’s Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture. “Only twelve drawings by Michelangelo exist in public collections across the entire US. The twelve drawings in Michelangelo Public and Private double that number and represent an important opportunity for American audiences to learn from these treasures.”

Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari tells us that Michelangelo Buonarroti burned most of his drawings and other preparatory works before his death “so that no one should see the labors he endured and the ways he tested his genius, and lest he should appear less than perfect.” He purposefully cultivated the myth of an inspired genius, for whom completed masterpieces materialized through a single, near-divine effort. This was far from the truth, however, as the master worked meticulously and tirelessly behind the scenes to perfect his works through drawings, models and casts.

Combined with a prodigious artistic ability that was expressed from a very early age, Michelangelo’s efforts to craft his own image led to the artist’s widespread and enduring celebrity status. Painted and sculpted portraits and commemorative medals celebrating his life demonstrate the “cult of Michelangelo” that had already begun well before his death. Engraved copies of passages from the Last Judgment – sold throughout Europe – document the original appearance of Michelangelo’s grand opus and prove the demand that existed for images of his work. Bringing all of these together with intimate drawings by the master’s own hand, Michelangelo Public and Private offers a rare glimpse at the artist’s humanity and the longevity of his vision, confirming Michelangelo’s status as an exceptional artistic genius.

MICHELANGELO AND THE SISTINE CHAPEL
The largest collection of Michelangelo’s drawings still in existence resides at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, although for conservation reasons only a small handful can be on view at a given time. Twelve of these drawings are traveling to the Seattle Art Museum as the centerpiece ofMichelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti. Most of the drawings on view are original preparatory drawings for Michelangelo’s frescoes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling and altar wall – drawings, which reveal that the full-blown designs we marvel at in the Sistine Chapel were often the product of painstaking reflection, study and revision.

For instance, the artist incorporated allegorical nude figures throughout the narrative of the Sistine ceiling paintings. Several drawings on view in the exhibition at SAM expose Michelangelo’s repeated studies and alterations as he puzzled through how to make these figures work within the odd-shaped ceiling spaces. At the same time, these drawings show the artist perfecting the muscular monumentality of form for which the Sistine figures have become known and which is a hallmark of Michelangelo’s style.

Other drawings in the exhibition are much more finished, directly reflecting passages from the final paintings on the chapel ceiling. The beautifully nuanced and meticulously shaded Study for a Man’s Face in the Flood in the Sistine Ceiling seems perhaps a study of emotion rather than the monumentality of form. In still other drawings, Michelangelo appears to have had a very clear idea – in even the most preliminary of sketches –what he wanted to achieve in the final painting. In the Study for Adam in the Expulsion from Paradise, the artist has, in just a few sweeping strokes, evoked the powerful gesture and sense of shame that the final painting conveys.

Throughout the exhibition, the curators include reproductions of the final paintings that correspond to the working drawings on view. This allows museum visitors to witness much of Michelangelo’s process, from initial conception to finished masterpiece. Other supporting works help viewers understand the narrative scheme and formal attributes of the ceiling frescoes and the Last Judgmentpainted on the altar wall. A nineteenth-century tabletop illustrating the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, serves as a guide for visitors as they match the preparatory drawings with the completed paintings. Etched copies of the ceiling frescos created by Giorgio Ghisi shortly after the cycle was completed express the hunger that Michelangelo’s contemporaries and public had for images of his work. A vibrantly-colored painted copy of the Last Judgment from the circle of Giulio Clovio, also created just after the work’s completion, is a key piece of evidence proving that the surprisingly vibrant colors uncovered when the Last Judgment was restored in the 1990s actually match Michelangelo’s original palette.

MICHELANGELO THE MAN AND THE MYTH
Michelangelo worked hard to hide exactly that which interests us today: glimpses into his private life and working process. His reputation as divinely-inspired – if not in fact divine himself – began very early in his life when as a young boy he showed incredible skill as an artist; and it followed him throughout his life and into perpetuity.Michelangelo Public and Private presents works that tell us more about Michelangelo the man – his family, his friends and his own complex personality and career – as well as objects that underscore the reverence felt for him during his lifetime and beyond.

In a letter written to his father in 1509, Michelangelo wrote, “I’ve finished that chapel I was painting. The Pope is quite satisfied.” This dutiful report from a son to his father, delivered in a laconic manner familiar to many parents, reminds us of Michelangelo’s humanity, despite his incredible place in the history of art, architecture and engineering. Visitors to Michelangelo Public and Privatecan peruse personal documents, letters, even an illustrated menu, that remind us of the complex business dealings, the personal connections and the day-to-day life of this artistic genius.

In addition, the exhibition includes a bronze cast of Michelangelo’s earliest sculpted work, the bas-relief Madonna of the Stairs from the late 1480s-early 1490s (bronze cast from 1566). This work shows the awe-inspiring precociousness of the young artist and demonstrates how the master-artist earned such a lofty reputation at so young an age. Commemorative works such as a Medal of Michelangelo created by Leone Leoni in 1561, a bronze bust of the artist fashioned after his death mask, and an early 17th-century painting commemorating the placing of this bust on Michelangelo’s sepulcher in the church of Santa Croce in Florence show how revered he was in his lifetime and beyond.

EXHIBITION ORGANIZATION AND CATALOGUE
Michelangelo Public and Private: Drawings for the Sistine Chapel and Other Treasures from the Casa Buonarroti was curated by Pina Ragioneri, Director of the Casa Buonarroti. Gary Radke, professor of Fine Arts at Syracuse University, is the Curatorial Advisor for the Seattle Art Museum. The local curator for the exhibition is Chiyo Ishikawa, Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art and Curator of European Painting and Sculpture at the Seattle Art Museum. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 65-page catalogue, Michelangelo: Public and Private, with essays by Pina Ragioneri and Gary Radke.

CASA BUONARROTI, FLORENCE, ITALY
The Casa Buonarroti was founded in 1612 by Michelangelo’s great-nephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger (1568-1647). Established on the site of the artist’s former home as a monument to the younger Michelangelo’s famous relative, Casa Buonarroti houses original works of art within a humanist decorative scheme that celebrates Michelangelo’s’ life and art. With the largest collection of the artist’s drawings in the world, it now acts as the protector of the artist’s legacy in Florence.

EXHIBITION SUPPORT
The exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Lead Presenting Foundation Sponsor is the Robert Lehman Foundation. Presenting Corporate Sponsors are JPMorgan Chase & Co. and The Boeing Company. Exhibition Sponsors are the Seattle Art Museum Supporters (SAMS) and 4Culture King County Lodging Tax. Additional support is provided by the Leona M. Geyer Charitable Trust, Enrique A. Tessada, and contributors to the Annual Fund.

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The exhibition is organized by the Seattle Art Museum in collaboration with the Casa Buonarroti, Florence. Lead Presenting Foundation Sponsor is the Robert Lehman Foundation. Presenting Corporate Sponsors are JPMorgan Chase & Co. and The Boeing Company. Exhibition Sponsors are the Seattle Art Museum Supporters (SAMS) and 4Culture King County Lodging Tax. Media Sponsor is King 5 Television. Additional support is provided by the Leona M. Geyer Charitable Trust, Enrique A. Tessada, and contributors to the Annual Fund.

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