1000 Yard by Eric Villarreal

Cuentos de la Ciudad: The Art of Eric Villareal
Artes de la Rosa
Opening February 10, 2012

As part of it’s 2011/2012 Season of art, entertainment and culture, Artes de la Rosa Cultural Center for the Arts is proud to showcase the artwork of Eric Villarreal in the exhibit, Cuentos de la Ciudad. The exhibit will open on February 10^th starting at 6:00 pm with a light reception. Eric Villarreal will be on hand to discuss his artwork and meet and greet the public.

The Artes de la Rosa Gallery is located at 1442 N. Main St., Fort Worth, TX  76164. For more information please call Producing Director Mark Alcala 817-735-1117 or visit www.artesdelarosa.org.

About the Exhibit

Exploring the world of his childhood, Artist Eric Villarreal offers a vivid yet moody view of the community he grew up in. Depicting images of ‘el barrio’ with vivid color and strong imagery, he unfolds breathtaking stories that serve as testemant to the lives surrounding all artists.

From the Artist

Growing up, there weren’t any galleries or museums to expose me to the great artists of the past and present. I relied mainly on television and movies to expose me to artistic visions and style. Media has had a great impact on how I perceive the world. Therefore, it is only natural that it extends to my paintbrush as well. Recently, I have simplified the backgrounds and concentrated more on the figure itself. My aim is to set the mood between art and viewers, allowing the audience to reach their own conclusions to the story that is untold. My paintings are not only my observations on the world, but a testament of my life and the people I surround myself with.

Ghost of a Good Thing by Eric Villarreal

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth is proud to announce the eighth Modern ’til Midnight on Saturday, April 14. An eclectic array of live music will be featured during the Modern’s extended, late-night hours. In addition, guests will have the opportunity to enjoy unique gallery activities, films, and exceptional cuisine from Café Modern.

Date: Saturday, April 14, 2012 from 6 p.m. to midnight
Admission: $15, free for Modern members

Tickets will be sold at the door. Contact the Modern for advanced ticket sales.

Live Music from Local and National Artists

The following lineup of musicians will perform outside against the Modern’s reflecting pond:

School of Seven Bells-Guitarist Benjamin Curtis and Alejandra Deheza bring a distinct and mysterious combination of futuristic beats and harmonious melodies known as psychedelic or indie pop. In concert, Curtis can often be seen manipulating various electronic devices in between guitar segments following Deheza’s angelic voice.

Air Review-The Dallas rock quintet’s dynamic shows have allowed them the opportunity to share stages with the likes of Portugal the Man, Bowling for Soup, Blue October, The Boxer Rebellion,and One Eskimo.

Calhoun-”The phrase ‘pure pop perfection’ is likely an overused crutch in the lexicon of music criticism. Also, it’s likely typically used for fare that usually finds itself residing on the Top 40 end of the dial. With all of that out of the way, allow us to proclaim that Calhoun’s newest album, Heavy Sugar, is indeed pure pop-rock perfection.”
-Kelly Dearmore, Best of Texas

The Angelus-Led by the enigmatic vocal powerhouse Emil Rapstine, whose brooding tones and mesmerizing stage presence bring to mind any number of iconic front men from Morrissey to Nick Cave, and backed by four young men who quietly summon up epic sounds that build like storm systems and burst into bone rattling sonic downpours, The Angelus often leave even the hardest hearted hipsters teary eyed and shaken.

Skeleton Coast-The Fort Worth pop rock quartet Skeleton Coast brings listeners a 1960s rock sound with a healthy dose of modern electronics. Influences include the Beach Boys, Modest Mouse, Pink Floyd, and Roy Orbison.

Happenings in the Galleries

The special exhibitions Glenn Ligon: AMERICA and FOCUS:Katie Paterson will be on view along with select works from the Modern’s permanent collection. Throughout the evening there will be special tours in the galleries. Admission includes access to galleries.

Glenn Ligon: AMERICA

Glenn Ligon: AMERICA is the first comprehensive, midcareer retrospective of Glenn Ligon (b. 1960), widely regarded as one of the most important and influential American artists to have emerged in the past two decades. Organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art and curator Scott Rothkopf, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition surveys 25 years of Ligon’s work, from his student days until the present. The exhibition features roughly 100 works, including paintings, prints, photographs, drawings, and sculptural installations, as well as the artist’s recent, striking neon reliefs. The retrospective also debuts previously unexhibited early works, which shed light on Ligon’s artistic origins, and for the first time reconstitutes major series within his work, such as the seminal Door paintings that launched his career.

FOCUS: Katie Paterson

Katie Paterson is known for her multidisciplinary and conceptually driven work, with an emphasis on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology. Many of her installations are the result of intensive research and collaboration with specialists as diverse as astronomers, nanotechnologists, and fireworks manufacturers. Recent works in her exhibition at the Modern include: All the Dead Stars (2009), a large map documenting the locations of the 27,000 dead stars known to humanity; and Light Bulb to Simulate Moonlight (2009), an incandescent bulb designed to transmit wavelength properties identical to those of moonlight.

Paterson received her BA in 2004 from Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland and her MFA in 2007 from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has since participated in exhibitions at Modern Art Oxford, England; the Power Plant, Toronto, Canada; and Haunch of Venison, London, England. Her work has also been featured in the Whitstable Biennial 2010, Whitstable, England; PERFORMA 09, New York, New York; and Altermodern: Tate Triennial 2009, Tate Britain, London, England. She recently held the John Florent Stone fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art and was the Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London for the 2010-2011 academic year. Paterson lives and works in London and Berlin.

Revisit the insightful lectures from the Tuesday Evenings series with the Modern Podcasts. Visit www.themodern.org or subscribe to our podcasts on iTunes or by using the RSS feed in your preferred program.

Tuesday Evenings Cocktails and Light Bites

Guests can enjoy refreshments from 5 to 7 p.m. in Café Modern before Tuesday Evenings lectures. Choose from Café Modern’s unique cocktail menu or distinctive wine list. Coffee, tea, and light snacks are also available.

Schedule

February 7

For this Tuesday Evenings presentation, artist Glenn Ligon is in conversation with curator Scott Rothkopf on the subject of Ligon’s midcareer retrospective Glenn Ligon: AMERICA. Ligon is one of the most important American artists working today, with work spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and film, and exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe, including the 1991 and 1993 Whitney Biennials; Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary Art and The American Century: Art and Culture 1900-2000, both at the Whitney; solo exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem; the Kunstverein München, Germany; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; St. Louis Art Museum, Missouri; ICA in Philadelphia; and SFMOMA; as well as the 1997 Venice Biennale and Documenta II. Rothkopf is curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and curator of Glenn Ligon: AMERICA. Prior to his position at the Whitney, Rothkopf was senior editor at Artforum. Through both positions, Rothkopf has come to know Ligon and his art well, having worked closely with the artist on this retrospective and as editor of Ligon’s book Yourself in the World: Selected Writings and Interviews. Given Ligon and Rothkopf’s relationship, as well as their obvious insight into the exhibition, this is a very special presentation that also serves as a preview for Glenn Ligon: AMERICA,which opens to the public on Sunday, February 12.

February 14

Andrew Campbell is an art historian and senior lecturer at Texas State University, where he teaches courses on contemporary art, feminism and visual representation, bad taste, film, and graphic novels. For Tuesday Evenings, Campbell presents one facet of his current project, Bound Together, an academic study of gay and lesbian leather communities in the 1970s. In this Valentine’s Day presentation entitled The Practice of Sex, the Work of History/ the Work of Sex, the Practice of History, Campbell–in an effort to engage in the ongoing project of writing contemporary art histories by making sense of a multitude of artists and their practice(s) as well as the expansion of historical LGBTQ visual cultures and communities that might otherwise be deemed too esoteric or stigmatized for study–presents four contemporary artists/collectives (Christian Holstad, Monica Majoli, Dean Sameshima, and A. K. Burns/A. L. Steiner) who refashion source documents from 1970s leather communities in order to comment on the politicized practices of LGBTQ love and sex in the twenty-first century.

*Audience members should note that to fully explore and present his subject, Campbell’s presentation includes mature language, themes, and subject matter.

February 21

Tim Rollins is an artist, activist, and teacher based in South Bronx, New York, who is known for what might be understood as “art activism,” and specifically his collaborative work with a group of at-risk students who call themselves Kids of Survival (K.O.S.). Beginning his career in 1980 as cofounder of Group Material–a collective of young New York artists pooling resources to launch exhibitions that address social themes–Rollins laid the ground work for what has become an art-world phenomenon known as Tim Rollins and K.O.S. Moving from traditional student/teacher interactions to a respected fine art collaborative practice, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. is represented by Lehman Maupin gallery in New York and shows internationally, with an exhibition history that includes two Whitney Biennials, the 1988 Venice Biennale, Carnegie International, as well as Documenta 8. After showing at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland, more than 20 years ago, Tim Rollins and K.O.S. present new works in a major survey exhibition in Basel entitled On Transfiguration, on view January 21 through April 15, 2012.”With Rollins’s guidance, these students are producing artwork of a remarkable sophistication, which refuses to conform to known categories but alternates between the literary and the visual, the modern and the naïve. Rollins’s teaching approach is at once classic and iconoclastic, for he uses significant works of literature as the basis for a visual statement. The result is a multilevel collaboration: among the students, between teacher and student, between the group and the authors whose books they choose.” Roberta Smith, New York Times.

This Tuesday Evenings presentation, Art and the Beloved Community, offers a special opportunity to hear from Rollins on the history, experiences, and initiatives of this extraordinary group.

February 28

Katie Paterson is a young British artist receiving a great deal of attention as a cross-medium, multidisciplinary, and conceptually driven artist who focuses on nature, ecology, geology, and cosmology in her work, using her skill and knowledge as an artist together with her limitless curiosity and tireless research to probe matters often left to science. Her devotion and hard work have been rewarded. Paterson recently held the 2010-2011 John Florent Stone Fellowship at Edinburgh College of Art and the 2010-2011 Leverhulme Artist in Residence in the Astrophysics Group at the University College London, as well as recently being named one of four “Best New Artists in Britain” by The Observer of London. In addition, in 2008 she was the recipient of the first annual Creative 30 Award. With work that literally explores the universe and presents its various phenomena, Paterson has been acknowledged and championed by fellow British artist Cornelia Parker in a 2010 article for The Guardian as, “original, engaging, and expansive. She makes us realize how inconsequential we are in relation to the universe.”Described in the same article as, “a romantic . . . with the patience, curiosity, and technical persistence of a scientist,” Paterson first came to public attention with a solo show at Modern Art Oxford in 2008, a year after graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She has since shown in group and solo exhibitions from London to Seoul, Korea to Venice, where in 2011 she presented the unique and fascinating project 100 Billion Suns during the Venice Biennale.

For Tuesday Evenings, Paterson shares her experiences and ideas as an artist, offering special insight into her work featured in the Modern’s FOCUS: Katie Paterson, as well as what to look forward to from her growing career.

March 6

Jill Magid, a New York-based artist and writer, seeks platforms for working inside and outside of institutions, responding to their imposition, negotiation, and at times, capitulation of power. For Magid, this power is not a remote condition to contest, but rather something to manipulate by drawing it closer, exploiting its loopholes, engaging it in dialogue, seducing its agents, revealing its sources, infiltrating its structure, and repeating its logic. As an artist and writer, Magid is fascinated by the topics of hidden information; being public as a condition for existence; and intimacy in relation to power. With solo exhibitions at institutions around the world, including Tate Modern, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Berkeley Museum of Art, California; Tate Liverpool; the Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam; Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York; Gagosian Gallery, New York; the Centre d’Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona; and at the Security and Intelligence Agency of the Netherlands, Magid has been recognized with awards such as the Basis Stipendium from Fonds Voor Beeldende Kunsten in the Netherlands and the Netherland-America Foundation Fulbright Fellowship. She is also the author of four books, including Becoming Tarden, which opens with, “The secret itself is much more beautiful than its revelation.” In accordance with Magid’s proclivity for intrigue, this book is as mysterious as the project it is associated with, which included the book being edited, censored, and its contents confiscated by the Dutch Secret Service, and a one-time-only exhibition of the novel at Tate Modern last fall.

For Tuesday Evenings, Magid presents Jill Magid: Embedded, a survey of the artist’s career with insights into her strange and thrilling experiences and endeavors as an artist, including her next project, Failed States,at Arthouse and AMOAin Austin, which is also the subject of Magid’s fourth and upcoming book by the same title.

For more information about Jill Magid, visit www.jillmagid.net.

March 13

Brooklyn-based artist Byron Kim is known for his monochrome paintings, born out of representation, that seemingly challenge their relationship to abstraction. Faye Hirsch describes his work in an interview with the artist for Art in America, “You see subtle variations of color within the fields. Recalling paintings by midcentury modernists like Rothko and Reinhardt, they feel like pure abstraction, but as always with Kim, have profound ties to the world.” Recognized in the early 1990s for Synecdoche, a grouping of hundreds of small monochrome paintings based on skin tones that was included in the 1993 Whitney Biennial, Kim collaborated that same year with friend and fellow artist Glenn Ligon on the painting Black and White, which exploits the notion of “flesh tone” as a color. Kim has since moved to meditations on the sky with his ongoing Sunday Paintings (a series begun in 2001). These small and stunning presentations of the daytime sky are immediately personal, with notations from mundane to profound, that mark the moment they represent written across their surfaces while at the same time thoughtfully reference the historical Today Series by On Kawara. Kim’s devotion to his paintings and their subjects has brought him critical acclaim; he has received numerous awards, including the Alpert Award in the Arts, UCROSS, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including Korea, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada.

For Tuesday Evenings, Kim presents the ideas and experiences that have formed his work.

March 27

Andrea Fraser is an artist currently based in Los Angeles, California, where she is a professor at UCLA in the department of art. She also serves as visiting faculty for the Whitney Independent Study Program in New York. Fraser has used performance, video, and a range of other media to explore the motivations that drive artists, collectors, art dealers, corporate sponsors, museum trustees, and museum visitors from the pursuit of prestige to that of financial investment, to sexual fantasy and self-realization. Working since the mid-1980s, Fraser has built on the site-specific and research-based approaches that emerged with conceptualism, combining them with feminist investigations of subjectivity and desire. Her methods are rooted in the psychoanalytic principle that one can only engage structures and relationships through the immediacy of performance. In addition, Fraser also writes about her observations and experiences in art and life. Moved by a personal and immediate engagement with Fred Sandback’s work at Dia: Beacon in 2004, she wrote the essay, “Why does Fred Sandback’s Work Make Me Cry.”

For Tuesday Evenings, Fraser presents and discusses this moving essay that explores the psychological and emotional aspects of our relationship with art and museums.

April 3

Writer and artist Gregg Bordowitz presents Testing Some Beliefs, an ongoing series of lectures/performances that consider the strength and longevity, as well as the present relevancy, of some personal and collective beliefs. Currently the Chair of the film, video, new media, and animation department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and faculty at the Whitney Independent Study Program, Bordowitz is known for his work as an AIDS activist in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as his socially conscious, thoughtful, and poetic performance-based work. Throughout his career, he has been recognized with awards and grants, including the 2006 Frank Jewitt Mather Award for The AIDS Crisis Is Ridiculous and Other Writings 1986-2003, a Rockefeller Intercultural Arts Fellowship, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. Of Testing Some Beliefs, Bordowitz writes, “I believe that art can change the world. I believe that art and freedom are necessarily related. There are no facts to support these claims. Still, I carry these beliefs formed decades ago. How do some beliefs remain and what do I gain by believing? At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I will try to explain.”

For more information on Gregg Bordowitz, visit www.greggbordowitz.com.

April 10

Gary Rough is a Scottish conceptual artist based in New York who represented his homeland in the 2003 Venice Biennale. As described in the press release for a recent solo show at numberthirtyfive gallery, New York, Rough “has cast himself as the antihero in his own dystopian novel.” Rough scrupulously labors to report upon the fragility, pathos, and beauty of the human condition, evoking the romantic, mundane, bleak, and intimate in paintings, sculpture, text, T-shirts, site-specific installations, and more with work that appears to be cobbled together in a deceptively hurried and craftless manner. It is no surprise that Rough was attracted to Kurt Vonnegut’s character Rabo Karabekian, the fictional and failed Abstract Expressionist painter whose paintings faded and disappeared from their canvases in Bluebeard due to a combination of stupidity and bad luck. After working with the author, in 2007, the year of Vonnegut’s death, Rough recreated and showed Karabekian’s “Sateen-Dura Luxe” paintings, at Fergus McCaffrey Fine Art, New York, based on Vonnegut’s descriptions of them in the book. This exercise, and the remarkable resulting paintings, brought Rough critical acclaim and an intriguing relationship with Vonnegut and his widow. Rough continues to explore the ordinary and often pathetic experiences and conditions of life on earth with tenderness and extraordinary astuteness. For Tuesday Evenings, he shares the insights and revelations of his career thus far.

April 17

Lucy Lippard is a distinguished writer, curator, editor, lecturer, and activist who has long been appreciated for her expansive scholarship and insight, having been one of the first to recognize the dematerialization of the work in art’s movement toward conceptualism as well as an early champion of feminist art. The author of 21 books, curator of 50 exhibitions, cofounder of Printed Matter Inc., the Heresies Collective, Political Art Documentation/Distribution, Artists Call Against U.S. Intervention in Central America, and other artists’ organizations, Lippard has received eight honorary doctorates in fine arts as well as numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Criticism, two National Endowment for the Arts grants in criticism, the Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA) Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Bard College Award for Curatorial Excellence. Of Lippard’s book, The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, Thomas Hine wrote for the New York Times Book Review, “Lippard overwhelms us with the breadth of her reading and the comprehensiveness with which she considers the things that define place. . . . In its final section, The Lure of the Local is revealed as a sort of art book after all. Its intent is to explore the many things that those who make art or who make judgments about art should think about when they consider art that seeks to be ‘contextual,’ ‘site-specific,’ or ‘place making’.” Lippard’s most recent book is Down Country: The Tano of the Galisteo Basin 1250-1782, for which she received the Caroline Bancroft History Prize from the Denver Public Library.

For Tuesday Evenings, Lippard presents Undermining, touching on photography, the new West, development, water, and land art, as she discusses pits and erections (gravel pits and skyscrapers), and more.

Portrait of Carolus-Duran by John Singer Sargent, 1879

Sargent’s Youthful Genius: Paintings from the Clark
Amon Carter Museum of American Art
March 11 through June 17, 2012

On March 11, 2012, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art presents four masterworks by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), the preeminent expatriate painter of the late 19th century. In Sargent’s Youthful Genius: Paintings from the Clark, four renowned works from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute will travel to Texas for the first time. The exhibition is on view through June 17; admission is free.

Sargent’s legendary canvas Fumée d’Ambre Gris (Smoke of Ambergris) is among the four works in the exhibition. Created in 1880, this magnificent oil on canvas stands among the most remarkable of all the artist’s paintings, highly prized for its ambiguous narrative and exquisite color scheme of cream on white. The exhibition also includes Portrait of Carolus-Duran (1879), Sargent’s spirited portrait of his Parisian art instructor Carolus-Duran (1837–1917), as well two entrancing scenes from Sargent’s excursions to Italy, A Venetian Interior (1880–82) and A Street in Venice (1880–82).

“All four paintings display an informality and unconventional lack of finish, forecasting Sargent’s emergence as a modern painter,” says Rebecca Lawton, curator of paintings and sculpture at the Amon Carter. “Together, they also offer profound insight into the development of Sargent’s singular talent between 1879 and 1882, before he reached the age of 30.”

In 1910, Robert Sterling Clark—entrepreneur, soldier, explorer and an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune—settled in Paris and began collecting works of art, an interest he inherited from his parents. When he married Francine Clary in 1919, she joined him in what became a shared, lifelong passion.

The Clarks’ collection grew exponentially over the ensuing years. Following World War II, they worked to establish a public museum to house their holdings, and in 1955 the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute opened in Williamstown, Mass. The Clarks possessed a discerning eye for collecting, and many of the works they accumulated are today iconic.

“It’s a true honor for us to exhibit these tremendous works amongst our collection,” says Andrew Walker, director. “Sargent was one of the most influential American artists living and working abroad in the 19^th century, and these four works are among his best, defining his ‘youthful genius.’ We encourage our visitors to take advantage of this unique opportunity to see these paintings; they are spectacular.”

Sargent’s Youthful Genius: Paintings from the Clark is presented at the museum as part of a joint program with the Kimbell Art Museum, which will concurrently show the exhibition The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clark. Sargent’s Youthful Genius: Paintings from the Clark and The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clark were organized by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.

Free Public Programs

Thursday, March 29, 2012
6–7 p.m.
3 Under 30 Gallery Talk

Rebecca Lawton, Curator of Paintings and Sculpture, Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Get inspired as you learn about the great works created by Frederic Edwin Church, Arthur Dove and John Singer Sargent during their twenties. No reservations are required.

Sunday, April 22, 2012
1–4 p.m.
Young Masters Family Funday

Discover artists on display at the Amon Carter who created masterpieces at a young age, and then have your young artists create inspired artworks of their own! No reservations are required.

About the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The Clark is one of the few major art museums that also serves as a leading international center for research and scholarship. The Clark presents public and education programs and organizes groundbreaking exhibitions that advance new scholarship, and its research and academic programs include an international fellowship program and conferences. Its 140-acre campus in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts includes Stone Hill Center, designed by Tadao Ando and opened in 2008, which houses galleries, meeting and classroom facilities, and the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. The Clark, together with Williams College, America’s foremost liberal arts college, sponsors one of the nation’s leading master’s programs in art history.

Portrait of Carolus-Duran by John Singer Sargent, 1879

On March 11, 2012, The Age of Impressionism: Great French Paintings from the Clark opens at the Kimbell Art Museum, the only U.S. venue for this first-ever international touring exhibition of French Impressionist masterpieces from the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The Clark’s superb collection of French Impressionist paintings, which features a remarkable group of works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, is renowned throughout the world. The Clark exhibition is touring for a period of three years (2011–14) and appears at major venues in Italy, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, and China.

“We are honored to showcase this extraordinary collection,” commented Eric M. Lee, director of the Kimbell Art Museum. “Because many of the Impressionists painted outdoors, their works will sing out especially vibrantly in the natural light of Louis Kahn’s renowned gallery spaces. Visitors to the Museum are in for a stunning encounter with beautiful art enhanced by iconic architecture.”

The Kimbell has a long tradition of hosting some of the most esteemed Impressionist collections from around the world, which began with its very first special exhibition, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Paintings from the U.S.S.R (1973), drawn from the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg and the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, and continued with exhibitions of works from the Courtauld Institute, London (1987); the Barnes Foundation, Merion, Penn. (1994); the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris (2000–1); and the Art Institute of Chicago (2008).

The selection of 72 paintings in The Age of Impressionism includes 21 by Renoir, six by Claude Monet, seven by Camille Pissarro, four by Alfred Sisley, three by Edgar Degas, two by Edouard Manet, and two by Berthe Morisot. Many are celebrated masterpieces of Impressionism that visitors will recognize from reproductions even if they have never been to Williamstown to see them in person. The exhibition also features examples of the work of some leading French artists of the period who worked in alternative styles, including the landscape painters Camille Corot and Théodore Rousseau, figure painters William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jean-Léon Gérôme, and Jacques-Joseph Tissot, and the post-Impressionist painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin.

“The Age of Impressionism offers our visitors a chance to understand more than 70 great works of art through the personality and taste of the two remarkable collectors who founded the Clark Art Institute,” said George T.M. Shackelford, Kimbell deputy director. “Sterling Clark was an heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, who married in 1919 Francine Clary—a Frenchwoman who had been an actress at the Comédie Française. Together, they assembled for their homes in Paris and New York one of the finest collections of paintings, sculpture, and drawings formed in the early 20th century.”

Although the French Impressionists were the heart of the collection, the Clarks ranged widely in their tastes—paintings by the Old Masters found favor, as well as works by the modern Americans John Singer Sargent and Winslow Homer. The couple founded the Clark Art Institute as a showcase for the collection in 1955. Although the Institute’s holdings have expanded greatly since then, notably through the addition of a growing collection of early photography, its scope and character continue to represent the interests of the founders.

The Age of Impressionism represents all the important types of painting that the Impressionists practiced, from landscapes to figure compositions and still lifes. Their near-magical mastery of effects of natural light comes through strongly in Monet’s springtime view of Tulip Fields at Sassenheim, near Leiden or Pissarro’s Piette’s House at Montfoucault, a winter scene. The Clark Renoirs are virtually an exhibition within the exhibition, representing the range of his subject matter and the evolution of his style from the 1870s to the 1890s. They include some of the most sensuous and seductive of all his works—such unabashed celebrations of youth and beauty as Girl with a Fan and Sleeping Girl. Among the other masterpieces of Impressionist figure painting in the exhibition is one of the most beautiful of Degas’s behind-the-scenes paintings of the ballet, Dancers in the Classroom, its off-centered composition reflecting the artist’s love of Japanese woodblock prints.

Grouped near the beginning of the exhibition, paintings such as Gérôme’s Fellah Women Drawing Water give a sense of the high level of technical “finish” practiced by older painters and beloved of more conservative taste during the Impressionist era. Again, it is to the credit of Sterling and Francine Clark that they were able to appreciate the work of artists other than their favorites of the Impressionist avant-garde. “Academic, yes, tight, yes,” Sterling Clark said of one of his paintings by Gérôme, “but what drawing and mastery of the art.”

The exhibition concludes by suggesting some of the stylistic paths that the Impressionists opened up for younger painters. Gauguin’s Young Christian Girl, for example, shows Impressionist technique and color deployed in a less purely descriptive, more personal and stylized manner.

The 240-page catalogue that accompanies The Age of Impressionism features essays by James A. Ganz and Richard R. Brettell. Ganz provides an introduction to the life and collecting of Sterling Clark, and Brettell discusses the Clarks in relation to other great American collectors of the early 20th century. The catalogue is published by Skira Rizzoli, New York.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Promotional support is provided by American Airlines, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and NBC 5.

Visitor information is available on the exhibition website, impressionism.kimbellart.org.

The Clark at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art

Visitors to The Age of Impressionism at the Kimbell will have the opportunity to view some of the highlights of the Clarks’ American collection next door at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. The Amon Carter is presenting John Singer Sargent’s celebrated painting Fumée d’Ambre Gris (Smoke of Ambergris), along with three other early Sargents, in the concurrent focus exhibition Sargent’s Youthful Genius: Paintings from the Clark.

Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

The Clark is one of the few major art museums that also serves as a leading international center for research and scholarship. The Clark presents public and education programs and organizes groundbreaking exhibitions that advance new scholarship. It also offers an international fellowship program and presents colloquia, symposia, and conferences in the U.S. and abroad. Its 140-acre campus in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts includes Stone Hill Center, designed by Tadao Ando and opened in 2008, which houses galleries, meeting and classroom facilities, and the Williamstown Art Conservation Center. The Clark, together with Williams College, America’s foremost liberal arts college, sponsors one of the nation’s leading master’s programs in art history.

Kimbell Art Museum

The Kimbell Art Museum, owned and operated by the Kimbell Art Foundation, is internationally renowned for both its collections and for its architecture. The Kimbell’s collections range in period from antiquity to the 20th century and include European masterpieces by artists such as Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Poussin, Velázquez, Monet, Picasso, and Matisse; important collections of Egyptian and classical antiquities; and Asian, Mesoamerican, and African art.

The Museum’s building, designed by the American architect Louis I. Kahn, is widely regarded as one of the outstanding architectural achievements of the modern era. A second building, designed by world-renowned Italian architect Renzo Piano, is scheduled to open in 2013 and will provide space for special exhibitions, allowing the Kahn building to showcase the permanent collection.

Where the End Starts by KAWS, 2011 (photo courtesy KAWS Studio)

KAWS was born Brian Donnelly and grew up in New Jersey, where he began his art career as a graffiti artist – defacing billboards and ads with his characteristic X marks.  He’s a BFA graduate of the School of Visual Arts in NYC and currently lives in Brooklyn.

I’m increasingly interested in street artists who move so fluidly between graffiti, illustration, fine art, and product design.  KAWS was obviously influenced by cartoon characters – probably grew up drawing them like most boys who are artists – but has taken iconic characters like Mickey Mouse and SpongeBob to another level with his unique signature twists.

He also is one of a growing group of contemporary artists whose work is available for purchase in a variety of media, including fine art, highly collectable vinyl toys (ala KidRobot), snowboards, sneakers and clothing. KAWS is omnimedia.

How does his work show in a gallery?  I drove over to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth to see.

KAWS gallery work doesn’t have the immediacy or fresh expressiveness of graffiti or street art.  The works in focus:KAWS – two large fiberglass sculptures and a handful of paintings – are genuine pop art pieces in an updated but familiar sense.  His paintings would be at home in a room with Warhol or Lichtenstein or Indiana but they aren’t an homage to anyone – his style is uniquely his own.

The two sculptures in the show are hearty, substantial pieces.  They’re at least 8 feet tall, made of fiberglass, and posted as covered with “rubberized paint.”  I resisted the urge to touch when the guard staff wasn’t looking.

Accomplice dominates a small room that also features two paintings.  All three pieces are black against the white walls and light-colored flooring.  It’s pretty impactful.  I don’t immediately recognize what cartoon character this figure is based upon – it has rabbit ears but also the big, sort of lobular ears that KAWS adds on many of his figures.  KAWS often gives his figures a new mouth too – a sort of fluffy overbite, if you will.

Accomplice also sports a bolo tie.  His shoes, gloves, and eyes feature KAWS signature “X” – not as defacement but as an additional KAWS design element.

KAWS “black” paintings are technically tight and well executed.  He uses matte black, glossy black, and grays that are almost-black in a way I’ve never seen before.  The tone-on-tone color quality is playful in a completely unexpected way.  In the KAWS palette, gray is a beautiful color with many shades and tones – never muddy or dull.

Companion (ORIGINALFAKE) by KAWS, 2011 (photo courtesy KAWS Studio)

These paintings, On Time and Thirsty, are both diptychs, although it takes you a minute to notice this.  They are divided lengthwise into a 2/3 section and a 1/3 section but hung so tightly together they appear to be one canvas.  While the canvases relate to one another, they might also be interchangeable with other paintings.  It’s an interesting detail.

How many of us wanted the “Visible Man” toy at some point in our childhoods?  Well, it seems a young KAWS did, too – here he’s created another 8 foot fiberglass/rubberized paint sculpture – this time a chubby Mickey Mouse who has gotten the KAWS treatment, titled Comparison (OriginalFake).  Mickey’s outer shell is half-missing to allow us to see his brain, eyeball, lung, heart, stomach, intestines, and arm and leg musculature all in pretty much anatomic correctness on one side of him.  Mickey is finished in shades of gray, white, and black.

All of the paintings in the show take pieces and parts of the KAWS reference characters and reconstruct them in new ways.   There is an installation of 21 small black tondo paintings, Black Spots, each with a piece of a cartoon face – a tongue there, a couple of teeth here, an eye with the KAWS “X” here.

Finally, the centerpiece of the show – visible as you walk toward the show’s doorway – is Where the End Starts.  This is the most color piece in the show and stands out handsomely among the black and gray other pieces.  The bright colors in this painting buzz and vibrate against each other in a way that complements the chaos of the objects in the scene.  There are pieces of characters here – a rubbery hand, a couple teeth, a snout.  But the majority of the foreground subjects are crashing two-by-fours.  It reminds me of cartoon fight sequences with random objects exploding out of a furious cloud.  It’s a moment in time.

In the world of contemporary art, a small show that makes you want to learn more about the artist is a success in my book.  focus:KAWSdid just that.

Where the End Starts by KAWS, 2011 (photo courtesy KAWS Studio)

Tuesday Evenings at the Modern

February 7-April 17, 2012

This popular series of lectures and presentations by artists, architects, historians, and critics is free and open to the public. To assure seating, free admission tickets can be picked up at the Modern’s admission desk beginning at 5 pm on the day of the lecture. Seating begins at 6:30 p.m. and is limited to 250. A live broadcast of the lectures is shown in Café Modern for any additional guests. Lectures begin at 7 p.m. The Museum galleries and the café remain open until 7 p.m. on Tuesday evenings during the series.

• February 7 – Glenn Ligon, artist, with Scott Rothkopf, curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
• February 14 – Andrew Campbell, art historian and senior lecturer at Texas State University, San Marcos
• February 21 – Tim Rollins, artist, activist, and teacher
• February 28 – Katie Paterson, artist
• March 6 – Jill Magid, writer and artist
• March 13 – Byron Kim, artist
• March 20 – Spring break, no lecture
• March 27 – Andrea Fraser, artist and professor, University of California Los Angeles, department of art
• April 3 – Gregg Bordowitz, writer and artist
• April 10 - Gary Rough, artist
• April 17 – Lucy Lippard, writer, curator, editor, lecturer and activist

Sundays with the Modern

Sundays with the Modern offers unique perspectives on the Museum’s architecture, permanent collection, and special exhibitions. Artists, art historians, critics, writers, and architects hold conversations and lead tours in the galleries. This special program is free  and begins at 1 pm on the first Sunday of most months.

• February 5 – Shay Youngblood, writer
• March 4 – David Willburn, artist and curator
• April 1 – Thomas Feulmer, artist, curator, and director of educational programming, The Rachofsky House, Dallas, Texas
• May 6 – Wura-Natasha Ogunji, artist

Drawing from the Collection

Learn with local artists as they lead free, informal basic drawing classes in the galleries. Open to adults at all skill levels. Bring a sketchbook and pencils. Registration is not required but a sign-up sheet is located at the front desk.

First Sundays of the month

2-3:30 p.m.

• February 5 – Rachel Black
• March 4 – Margaret Meehan
• April 1 – Tim Best
• May 6 – Matthew Cusick

In the Moment at the Modern

This special program is designed for people with memory loss and their caregivers. Participants experience works of art at the Modern through intimate conversation with docents and thoughtful projects designed by the Museum’s education staff. Two sessions are offered on select Wednesdays, with space for 20 participants at both 10 am and 2 pm. RSVP to tours@themodern.org or 817.840.2141. This free program includes admission to the galleries and all materials.

Wednesdays, 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

February 22, March 28, April 25, May 23, June 27

Modern Graduate Series

The Modern Graduate Series aims to foster and sustain a vibrant dialogue among fine arts and art history graduate students from across the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The series is a succession of meetings where area graduate students can experience the Modern’s special exhibitions and attend lectures by visiting artists, scholars, and art professionals from across the state. Each session consists of complimentary admission to the Modern’s current exhibition, followed by a lecture from the evening’s visiting speaker. Afterward, participants can enjoy thought-provoking discussion, hors d’oeuvres, and drinks with the speaker at Café Modern. Lectures begin at 5 p.m. (galleries close at this time).

• February 8 – Eileen Maxson, artist, Houston, Texas

Public Tours

Docent-led tours of the galleries are offered Tuesday through Sunday at 2 pm. A tour focusing on architecture is available on the first Saturday of each month at 11 am; a tour focused specifically on special exhibitions is available at 2 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month. Public Spanish-language tours are also available on the first Sunday of each month at 2 p.m. These tours do not require prior arrangements and begin in the Museum lobby. For information, please call 817.840.2119.

The Big Drawing Class

A new take on a classic theme, this class will explore drawing in relation to the Modern’s exhibitions for the spring 2012 season. Drawing is a foundation for most artists. Whether a sketch, a notation, or a refined mark in a journal, artists use drawing in various ways to work through ideas. This class explores drawing through the FOCUS exhibitions featuring KAWS, Katie Paterson, Ged Quinn, and the special exhibition, Glenn Ligon: AMERICA. The Big Drawing Class spans 13 weeks, with three different artists leading classes over the course of the semester. All materials are provided. Registration is required. Enroll early; space is limited.

Fridays, 1-4 p.m.

February 3-May 11, with a two-week break in March

Instructors: Lily Hanson, Peter Ligon, Kristen Cochran

$250; $200 for Modern members

How to register for Studio Classes:

Go to www.themodern.org to download a registration form, fill it out, and return it to the Museum in one of the following ways:

Mail the form and payment to:

Studio Classes
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
3200 Darnell Street, Fort Worth, TX 76107

Deliver the form and payment to the admission desk during regular operating hours

Register online at www.themodern.org

Please note enrollment for classes is on a first-come, first-served basis. Class sizes are limited. For information, please call 817.840.2121.

This year, the Plano Art Association is excited to have artist Ryder Richards and Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden’s Director Laura Green as jurors. They will select works for the exhibit, and choose the recipients of our Grand Prize of $1000, as well as first, second and third place cash awards in each category.

Aiming to showcase and reward the best art from Plano and the Metroplex area, the show is non-thematic and welcomes submissions from all areas of art, whether in cutting-edge contemporary or traditional disciplines, in three categories: Two-Dimensional, Three-Dimensional and Print & Photography.

This is the Seventh consecutive year for this exhibition, and the art selected for the 2011 show can be viewed on the PAA’s website (jurors Michael O’Keefe and Enrique Cervantes): In 2011, the show featured over 70 works, and the selected works can be viewed on the PAA’s website: http://www.planoartassociation.com/art-news/sixth-annual …

The Plano Art Association is excited to be able to provide a platform for all level of artist, whether student, amateur or professional, to take part in a high-quality show in a modern gallery setting. We would like to thank Professor Betty Siber, of Collin County College Art Department) for her continuing help in hosting and planning this show.

The show’s submission deadline is February 12th; the show runs from March 8th until April 4th, with an Opening Reception on on Wednesday March 21st, from 5 until 8 p.m.

About the 2012 Juror

Laura Green

Laura Green is the Director of Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden, in Dallas, where she has worked since 1997.  She received her Bachelors with a double major in Art History and Music from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.  She has been active with the Junior Associates Circle of the Dallas Museum of Art for over 10 years, having served as Co-Chair and currently serves on their Advisory Committee.  She also serves on the Avant-Garde Society Executive Committee at the Nasher Sculpture Center.  She is a graduate of the Leadership Arts Institute of the Business Council for the Arts, and currently serves on the Steering Committee for the Leadership Arts Alumni Association.  She also serves as a Steering Committee member of the Marquee Circle of the AT&T Performing Arts Center and is on the Advisory Committee for Art This Week.  Her volunteer work includes the Contemporary Art Dealers of Dallas, Dallas Art Dealers Association, Highland Park United Methodist Church, and the Junior League of Dallas.

Valley House Gallery & Sculpture Garden was founded in 1954 by Margaret and Donald Vogel.  The gallery represents established and emerging contemporary artists working in inventive ways with traditional media.  Along with Gallery Director Laura Green, Cheryl and Kevin Vogel continue to build on the tradition forged by his parents.

Ryder Richards

Ryder Richards, born in September of 1977, grew up in Roswell, New Mexico. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting from Texas Tech University with a minor in drawing and architecture. He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting on a scholarship from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas. Ryder has studied art in Italy, Spain, and Germany during his European travels.

Richards is currently an Instructor and the Gallery Coordinator for Richland College in Dallas, Texas. He is co- founder of the Ryder Jon Piotrs Nomadic Gallery, a traveling art gallery in the form of a Ryder truck, and Culture Laboratory, a collective of 12 American artists interested in the exchange of ideas and the social development of art in the 21st century.

Known for his much artistic collaboration, Richards continues to explore art as social experience. He is the recipient of several scholarships and awards for his achievements in art, including residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Vermont; Hilmsen, Germany; Paducah, Kentucky and Portales, New Mexico.

For more information, contact Alison Jardine at alison@alisonjardine.com.

The Plano Art Association was formed in 1969, and is funded by both our members and by a grant from the City of Plano. We are entirely run by art-loving volunteers who donate their time, and as an organization we are committed to creating opportunities for artists to show their work and to grow, as well as offering a diverse calendar of art events in Plano for our art-loving community.

As some of you may know, we have been suffering through almost daily server issues. Our previous web hosting company was not keeping up with the demand of our readership.

We appreciate your patience. Cheers.

Focus, Focus, Focus!

This new program for children between the ages of nine and 12 takes a closer look at the contemporary art in this season’s FOCUS exhibitions, featuring artists KAWS, Katie Paterson, and Ged Quinn. Each class spends time in the galleries looking and discussing the work and then proceeds to the studio for an art activity to further discussion. Sign up early; space is limited.

Saturdays, 10 am-noon
Per session: $20; $15 for members

February 4-Looking at FOCUS: KAWS
March 3-Looking at FOCUS: Katie Paterson
April 7-Looking at FOCUS: Ged Quinn

Scholarships are available; for information, call 817.840.2121.

Drawing from the Collection for Children

Drawing from the Collection for Children is now double the fun! This spring, two program sessions will be offered, one for ages five to eight and one for ages nine to 12. Each free session is led by an artist who takes participants through informal drawing exercises in relation to works in the Modern’s collection. Children under the age of six must be accompanied by an adult during the program. Bring a sketchbook and pencils. Attendance is limited; early arrival is encouraged. A sign-up sheet is located at the front desk.

First Sundays of the month
2-3:30 pm

February 5-John Alexander Taylor (ages five to eight) and Linnea Glatt (ages nine to 12)
March 4-Adam Palmer (ages five to eight) and Michael Blair (ages nine to 12)
April 1-Billy Zinser (ages five to eight) and Micah Yarborough (ages nine to 12)
May 6-Kayli House Cusick (ages five to eight) and Jin-Ya Huang (ages nine to 12)

Wonderful Wednesdays

Wonderful Wednesdays is now twice as nice, offered every second and third Wednesday of the month. This program for families with young children is led by a docent and includes a gallery project designed by the education department. Both the tour and project focus on a few works in the Modern’s collection. Registration is not required, but a sign-up sheet is provided at the front desk the day of the program. Attendance is limited; admission is free.

Wednesdays
4-4:45 pm

February 8 and 15-Visiting the work of Joseph Cornell
March 14 and 21-Visiting the work of Vija Celmins
April 11 and 18-Visiting the work of Robert Rauschenberg
May 9 and 16-Visiting the work of Carl Andre

Ten Pages

Remember to check out our sketchbooks for children of all ages. These free sketchbooks are available at the admission desk.

Tours led by Museum-trained docents provide a unique experience based on close viewing and conversation. All tours are free to the public with admission to the galleries. Groups with special needs are always welcome. For more information or to schedule a tour, please contact the tour coordinator at 817.840.2119 or tours@themodern.org.

Public Tours

Docent-led tours of the galleries are offered Tuesday through Sunday at 2 pm. A tour focusing on architecture is available on the first Saturday of each month at 11 am; a tour focused specifically on special exhibitions is available at 2 pm on the first Saturday of each month. Public Spanish-language tours are also available on the first Sunday of each month at 2 pm. These tours do not require prior arrangements and begin in the Museum lobby.

Teen/Artist Project

The Teen/Artist Project pairs area high school students with artists as teachers and aims to expand the students’ art practices, introducing new concepts, artists, and media. Each visiting artist leads students through an investigation of modern and contemporary art in the galleries and related projects in the Museum studio. A total of 15 students from the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades will be accepted to participate in the eight-month course based on their applications and accompanying materials; a limited number of slots will become available in January, when students can enter to participate in a spring “half-course.” Class sessions meet at the Modern from 2 to 5 pm most Sundays, September through April. The program is free of charge for those who are accepted. Students are required to make a firm commitment to the program, attending class regularly, and must be available for one weekend in May during the annual Teen/Artist Project exhibition. Applications for the 2012-2013 session will be available at www.themodern.org on April 1 and are due September 7.