Men of Menil: Sumo

On Thursday evening, March 8, 2012, Men of Menil−the black-tie event for gentlemen whose contributions provide funds for the Menil Collection’s general operations and education and outreach programs−will feature a rare import from Japan: a demonstration of the sport and ritual of sumo wrestling.

Guests will observe sumo master rikishi (wrestlers) in a tournament performance, which will be presided over by a gyōji (referee), who will also officiate related ceremonies and rituals. This presentation of Japan’s kokugi (national treasure) will be only the fourth time in the past twenty years that professional Japanese rikishi have performed sumo live in the United States.

Each year Men of Menil presents a unique form of entertainment. For the inaugural gala in 2010, professional billiards players demonstrated their astounding skills, and sleight-of-hand artists conjured all manner of magic and marvels last year. This March, guests will be privileged to witness an evening of sumo, a rarefied and splendid melding of athleticism and cultural heritage. Four sumo wrestlers, dressed in traditional robes, will mingle with guests before dinner. Among them will be Waka (Keisuke Kamikawa), Noro (Takuji Noro), and Yama (Ryuichi Yamamoto)−all traveling to Houston from Japan−as well as Byamba (Byambajav Ulambayar, a former world champion who has appeared in more than twenty television shows and three films, including Ocean’s 13).

After dinner, the wrestlers will then enter a dohyō, or ring, assembled in the middle of the hall for the bouts, creating a spectacle like none ever before seen in Houston. One would have to travel to Japan to witness a sumo performance of this caliber, featuring athletes at their elite level. A fusion of art and athleticism, sumo traces its history to the seventeenth century, when it was devised as an entertainment or offering for the pleasure of Shinto gods to ensure bountiful harvests.

Men of Menil takes place in an extraordinary setting, inside the museum’s Richmond Hall annex, which houses a remarkable light installation by the renowned Minimalist artist Dan Flavin. Lead sponsor Gulf States Toyota and a group of distinguished guests have already helped raise more than $400,000 to date in advance of the event. Please join us for an unforgettable evening of superb cuisine catered by Jackson and Company, libations, and fine cigars, and witness this stunning exhibition of the art of sumo.

The Menil Collection opened in 1987 and is widely considered one of the most important privately assembled collections of the twentieth century. The museum’s holdings, ranging from the prehistoric to art of the present day, are housed in a modern landmark designed by the renowned architect Renzo Piano. In the quarter-century since it opened to the public, the Menil has established an international reputation for presenting acclaimed exhibitions and producing many scholarly publications; pioneering partnerships with other cultural and educational institutions across Houston, Texas, and the U.S.; and conducting groundbreaking research in the conservation of modern and contemporary art. The Menil charges no admission fees.

Sumo (相撲, sumō) is a competitive full-contact sport where a wrestler (rikishi) attempts to force another wrestler out of a circular ring (dohyō) or to touch the ground with anything other than the soles of the feet. The sport originated in Japan, the only country where it is practiced professionally.

Many ancient traditions have been preserved in sumo, and even today the sport includes many ritual elements, such as the use of salt purification, from the days when sumo was an important aspect of the Shinto religion. Even certain Shinto shrines carry out forms of ritual dance where a human is said to wrestle with a kami (a Shinto divine spirit).

Life as a rikishi is highly regimented, with rules laid down by the Sumo Association. Most sumo wrestlers are required to live in communal “sumo training stables,” known in Japanese as heya, where all aspects of their daily lives—from meals to their manner of dress—are dictated by strict tradition. Most elite wrestlers are highly trained athletes between 20 and 35 years old. There are no weight restrictions or classes in sumo, meaning that wrestlers can easily find themselves matched off against someone many times their size. As a result, weight gain is an essential part of sumo training.

Crested Mynah on Oak Branch (detail) by Shokado Shojo and Hori Kyan, 1637 (photo by Paul Hester)

The new, permanent Arts of Japan Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will open to the public on Sunday, February 19. The Japan gallery will be the final installation in a suite of permanent Arts of Asia galleries surrounding Cullinan Hall in the Caroline Wiess Law Building, culminating an effort begun in 2007 to expand the presentation of Asian art at the museum.

The Arts of Japan Gallery will open with a special inaugural exhibition, Elegant Perfection: Masterpieces of Courtly and Religious Art from the Tokyo National Museum, showcasing important objects from the collection of the Tokyo National Museum, including National Treasures and Important Cultural Properties that will stay in Houston for only eight weeks. In April 2012, the MFAH permanent collection of Japanese art will be installed with 16th-and 17th-century ceramics, 12th-century bronze Buddhist ritual objects and a 1000 B.C. sculpture on two-year long-term loan from the Tokyo National Museum. This will be the first time for the Tokyo National Museum to approve long term loans to an American museum.

“We are extremely grateful to the Tokyo National Museum for loaning their National Treasures and other important cultural properties for the opening of the new Arts of Japan Gallery,” said Christine Starkman, MFAH Curator of Ancient to Contemporary Asian Art. “The display of these stunning and rare works immeasurably enriches our ability to showcase traditional Japanese work. Our commitment to exhibit contemporary objects will continue as well, with phase two of the installation and the eventual commission of a major work from a contemporary Japanese artist, showcasing Japanese art through time.”

Overseen by Starkman, the new Arts of Japan Gallery space will reflect a singularly Japanese aesthetic of beauty and quiet elegance. Custom-designed Toshiba LED lighting will illuminate artworks displayed in vitrine cases designed by Glasbau Hahn (of Germany).

The inaugural exhibition, Elegant Perfection: Masterpieces of Courtly and Religious Art from the Tokyo National Museum (through April 6, 2012), showcases more than 25 objects from the prestigious Tokyo National Museum’s permanent collection. This exhibition will cover essential themes and traditions in Japanese art and culture, illuminating the relationship between the rise of Buddhism in Japan and the development of a highly refined court culture. Among the works on loan are a number of rare pieces designated National Treasures, Important Cultural Properties and Important Art Objects, including a rare 11th-century edition of the Manyoshu (one of the oldest existing collections of Japanese poetry, first compiled in approximately 759 AD); a sumptuous indigo paper scroll documenting the Chinese priest Xuan-Zhuang’s travels to India, referred to as the Daito Saiiki Ki; calligraphy by the 16th–17th-century Emperor Goyozei; and such masterworks of Japanese Buddhist art as an 11th-century Heian period seated sculpture of Dainichi Nyorai and a 14th-century painting depicting the Buddha’s departure from this world.

Seated Dainichi Nyorai, 11th century (photo courtesy Tokyo National Museum)

Beginning in April, some of the objects on loan from the Tokyo National Museum, including Neolithic objects, bronze Buddhist ritual implements, lacquer musical instruments and a wide array of fine ceramics, will be shown for two years alongside works in the MFAH Japanese art permanent collection. The Arts of Japan presentation will be consistent with the Arts of Asia gallery displays at the MFAH, showcasing ancient art objects alongside contemporary art objects, such as Japanese photographer Ishimoto Yasuhiro’s celebrated photographs of the sacred Shinto shrine complex at Ise. The shrine is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years on an adjacent plot, thus purifying and renewing the space, while preserving the original design from the 3rd- and 4th-centuries. This process embodies the Shinto belief that what lives and dies is always renewed and reborn.

Continuing the emphasis on Japanese art through the summer, MFAH will debut Unrivaled Splendors: The Kimiko and John Powers Collection of Japanese Art June 17-September 23, 2012 in the 22,000-square-foot Upper Brown Pavilion of the Law Building. Kimiko and John Powers have been collecting Japanese art since the 1960s and have built a prestigious collection of over 300 objects spanning over 12 centuries. The collection is particularly strong in Buddhist art and calligraphy and 17th- and 18th-century scholarly painting. Among the 83 objects that will be shown at the MFAH are large-scale masterworks.

Opening Events

The MFAH members’ opening will include a ribbon-cutting and performance by Akiko Yano, a composer, vocalist and pianist. Yano established herself at an early age and released her solo debut album, Japanese Girl, in 1976. Touring internationally and playing such venues as the North Sea Jazz Festival, Yano released her 27th album in 2008. Akiko, which was produced by Grammy-Award winning producer T Bone Burnett, includes collaborations with guitarist Marc Ribot and percussionist Jay Bellerose. Yano has also composed musical scores for films including Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbors the Yamadas.

Education and Public Programs

A video station inside the gallery will make an 8-minute film, Seasonal Ceramics used in the Japanese Tea Ceremony, available to help visitors explore the symbolism and meaning of the ceramic vessels from the National Tokyo museum. Also offered will be Gallery Talks in March, every Thursday at noon and every Saturday at 2 p.m., for 45 minutes or 20 minutes, free with museum admission. And throughout the run of the exhibition will be tours for adults and students; MFAH Book Club guided visits; and access to the Kinder Foundation Education Center. Public programming highlights are below:

• Sunday, February 19, 2012 at 2 p.m.: Opening Day Lecture/Demonstration: Buddhist Art and Courtly Elegance, presented by Mr. Shimatani Hiroyuki, Vice Executive Director of the Tokyo National Museum. A demonstration and reception follow the talk, free with general museum admission.
• MFAH Book Club selection, An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro, with guided visits available February 17–September 16, 2012. The MFAH Book Club links works of literature to art in the museum’s permanent collection and book clubs may reserve a Book Club Guided Visit through the museum’s website. Website visitors may also download accompanying discussion guides and use them to facilitate conversation in their book clubs.
• Thursday, March 14, 2012 from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Spring Break Family Programs: Tea Bowl, Jar, and Dish: Exploring Japanese Art. Families may drop in at Creation Station to create an art-making project in the studio and/or spend time at Sketching in the Galleries, drawing works of art located in any of the Arts of Asia Galleries.
• Thursday, April 26, 2012: Homeschool Family Day: Arts of Asia. Families may visit Gallery Cart to learn more about the ideas and techniques of artists; participate in sketching in the galleries; and create their own works of art in the studio. A Book and a Look, a storybook checkout program, is also available. No pre-registration is required. Program activities are free and admission to the museum is free on Thursdays, courtesy of the Shell Oil Company Foundation.
• Tuesday, May 8, 2012: Homeschool Workshop: Arts of Japan. Designed for families who homeschool children ages 4 to 12, the program features an interactive gallery tour followed by a group discussion in the galleries, as well as an art-making activity. All participants receive materials that may be used to extend the lesson at home and pre-registration is required.
• Sundays, March 4 and 6, June 3, July 1, August 5, and September 2, 2012: Art Improv. Families choose a work of art anywhere in the museum, including the Arts of Japan Gallery, and make friends with it—sketching it, writing about it and talking about it together. Then, they can go to the studio and create a work of art inspired by their new “friend.” Sketching in the Galleries and A Book and a Look, a storybook checkout program, are also available on Art Improv Sundays.

Offered at a later date will be Art for the Mind and Spirit, a Community Outreach Medical Program; Picture Books: Summer Art Camp with Harris County Library and the MFAH; the MFAH Art Detectives Summer Program; Sunday Family Zone & Studio; MFAH Family Day; and Art + Studio. Check www.mfah.org for details to be posted.

Arts of Asia at the MFAH

The Arts of Japan gallery concludes a suite of five permanent Arts of Asia Galleries at the MFAH. Also open to the public and on permanent display are the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Arts of China Gallery; the Nidhika and Pershant Mehta Arts of India Gallery; the Indonesian Gold Gallery; and the Arts of Korea Gallery. The five galleries surround Cullinan Hall on the first floor of the Caroline Wiess Law Building, 1001 Bissonnet Street, totaling about 12,000 square feet.
Funding

The Arts of Japan Gallery is made possible with generous support from Japan Business Association of Houston 2011* in memory of Mr. Seigo Arai; Nanako and Dale Tingleaf; Mitsui & Company (U.S.A.), Inc.; Penny and Paul Loyd; Mitsubishi Corporation; Miwa S. Sakashita and John R. Stroehlein; Sumitomo Corporation of America; GE Energy; Donna Fujimoto Cole; Kathy and Glen Gondo; Drs. Ellin and Robert Grossman; Gulf States Toyota, Inc.; Mitsubishi International Corporation- Houston Branch; Akemi and Yasuhiko Saitoh; Satake USA Inc.; Taeko and Nobuya Tomita; Toshiba International Corporation; and Nozomi and Ryuji Watanabe.

*Japan Business Association of Houston 2011 gift made possible in part by JX Group; Kaneka Texas Corporation; Kuraray America, Inc.; Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift America, Inc.; NOLTEX LLC; and Toshiba International Corporation.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Founded in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is among the ten largest art museums in the United States. Located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the MFAH comprises two gallery buildings, a sculpture garden, library, theater, two art schools, and two house museums.The encyclopedic collection of the MFAH has some 63,000 works and embraces the art of antiquity to the present.

Crested Mynah on Oak Branch (detail) by Shokado Shojo and Hori Kyan, 1637 (photo by Paul Hester)

Falling by Okanoue Toshiko, 1956

Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
March 11 through June 10, 2012

Nearly ever since photography’s invention early in the 19th century, artists have utilized the medium to experiment with social, political and urban construction and imagination, which later led to the creation of collages and montages, and most recently moving images. Utopia/Dystopia: Construction and Destruction in Photography and Collage, which opens March 11 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, explores this rich and complex tradition of avant-garde practices with 100 works that have been created since the 1860s in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe.

The works include photographs, photo collages, photomontages and moving images, along with sculptures that incorporate photography. The exhibition has been drawn from the collections of the MFAH as well as from the Menil Collection, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art and private holdings. Among the many artists featured are Herbert Bayer, Matthew Buckingham, Rachel Harrison, Richard Hawkins, Hannah Höch, El Lissitzky and Tom Thayer.

Utopia/Dystopia is organized by MFAH associate photography curator Yasufumi Nakamori and will be on view through June 10, 2012 as part of the FotoFest 2012 Biennial: the largest and longest-running international photography festival in the United States. An illustrated catalogue with essays by Nakamori and Graham Bader, the Mellon Assistant Professor of art history at Rice University, will accompany the exhibition.

“In breaking and reassembling found images to create a new vision, artists have found collage and montage ideal for expressing utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties,” said Nakamori. “The early-20th-century avant-garde movements of Cubism, Dada, Surrealism and Constructivism all embraced these methods, and the approach remains compelling today, when there have been a number of wars and revolutions occurring around the globe. Some contemporary artists resort to montage and collage to reflect the world they live in. All of the works in the exhibition feel fresh and relevant, and attest to the enduring attraction of constructing and destructing with photography.”

Bader writes in the catalogue: “From Berlin Dada to Paris Surrealism, these artists reconfigured photographic fragments to demonstrate the deeper truths such assemblages revealed … and to imagine, through their acts of cutting and pasting, alternative realities in both the present and future.”

The exhibition is organized around three key theme—urban visions, figure constructions and the quest for a utopian world. “Envisioning the City” explores urban environments. In Re-ruined Hiroshima (1968), architect Arata Isozaki superimposed two steel frameworks onto a razed landscape to represent either the ruined city of the past or a future Hiroshima being built out of the devastation. Architect Ron Herron’s Walking City on the Ocean (1966) clearly depicts a utopia—a pod city set on insect-like legs by the ocean, both isolated from the problems of the city and readily poised to escape any pending disaster. In El Lissitzky’s Runner in the City (c. 1926), an image of a male athlete jumping a hurdle is collaged over a photograph of a teeming Times Square, as if the figure were fleeing a dehumanized American metropolis.

Apple, New York Times, February 8, 2011 by Carter Mull, 2011

“Constructing the Figure” considers the ways that artists recombine figurative imagery to re-tell a specific narrative. Wangeshi Mutu, a Kenyan artist who works in New York, combines fragments from Western and African visual cultures in A Headresting Moment (2006): a larger-than-life-size collage of a hybrid female figure. Vivian Sundaram’s work reconstructs his family history, as in Hair (2001). The artist used Photoshop to combine a photograph of his Hungarian-Indian aunt in European dress with an image of his Indian grandfather in traditional clothing, reconnecting a daughter and a father who had a turbulent relationship.

The last section, “Searching for Utopia,” follows artists’ quests to create a better world. Ezaki Reiji, a late-19th-century studio photographer in Tokyo, collaged together 1,700 photographs of babies to convey population growth and the city’s future economic prospects. Carter Mull’s recent photo-drawing, Apple, New York Times, February 8, 2011, juxtaposes the concept of forbidden fruit with the Apple brand to comment on social media’s role in the Egyptian revolution.

FotoFest 2012 Biennial

The FotoFest 2012 Biennial, March 16–April 29, 2012, is the 14th International Biennial of Photography and Photo-related Art. The 2012 edition is titled “Contemporary Russian Photography,” and spans the late 1950s to the present. The United States’ largest and longest-running international photography festival, FotoFest is also one of the oldest international showcases for photography in the world. FotoFest 2012 features photography and mixed-media exhibitions, an international portfolio review for artists, evenings for art collectors, opportunities to meet artists, symposia on photography, artist and curator talks, workshops for artists, gallery treks, film screenings, book signings and the international Biennial Fine Print Auction. For more information, visit: www.fotofest.org/2012biennial.

MFAH Collections

Founded in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, is among the ten largest art museums in the United States. Located in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the MFAH comprises two gallery buildings, a sculpture garden, library, theater and two art schools, with two house museums, for American and European decorative arts, nearby. The encyclopedic collection of the MFAH numbers some 64,000 works and embraces the art of antiquity to the present.

Falling by Okanoue Toshiko, 1956

out-of-round X by Richard Serra, 1999 (photo by Rob McKeever)

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective
The Menil Collection
March 2 through June 10, 2012

Organized by the Menil Collection, Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective is the first-ever critical overview of the artist’s drawings, as well as the first major one-person exhibition organized under the auspices of the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center. The exhibition − which opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, traveled to San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), and now concludes at the Menil Collection − traces the crucial role that drawing has played in Richard Serra’s work for more than 40 years.

Although Serra is best known for his large-scale and site-specific sculptures, his work has also changed the practice of drawing. This exhibition shows how Serra’s work has expanded the definition of drawing through innovative techniques, unusual media, monumental scale, and carefully conceived relationships to surrounding architectural spaces. Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective is co-curated by Bernice Rose, chief curator emerita, the Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center; Michelle White, curator, The Menil Collection; and Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas senior curator of painting and sculpture, SFMOMA. Installed in reconfigured galleries at the Menil, the exhibition opens on March 2 and will remain on view through June 10.

This landmark traveling exhibition brings together more than 80 works, including 41 Installation Drawings, large framed works, and nearly 30 of the artist’s notebooks. Exclusively for the Menil, the artist is creating a new site-specific work, filling an entire gallery. Also on view will be four films by the artist. All of the work on view will unfold chronologically, tracing Serra’s ever-evolving early ideas and methods.

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective follows the artist’s investigation of drawing as an activity both independent from and linked to his sculptural practice. The exhibition begins with work from the late 1960s, when the artist’s drawings were made primarily with ink, charcoal, and lithographic crayon on paper. Over time, his drawings increased in scale, evolving into autonomous works of art that challenged the notion of drawing.

In the mid-1970s, Serra made the first of his large scaled Installation Drawings, some of which extend from floor to ceiling and extend in width to 20 feet. To make works such as Pacific Judson Murphy (1978), the artist attached Belgian linen directly to the wall and covered the entire surface with black paintstick−an oil-based pigment−to build stark, densely layered forms. These forms impact the viewer’s sense of mass and gravity, making for an experience that is as visceral as it is visual. The Installation Drawings marked a radical shift, altering conceptions of what a drawing is and how it can interact with architecture. Serra has written of these works, “By the nature of their weight, shape, location, flatness, and delineation along their edges, the black canvases enabled me to define spaces within a given architectural enclosure. The weight of the drawing derives not only from the number of layers of paintstick but mainly from its particular shape.”

Since the 1980s, Serra has continued to invent new techniques and to explore a variety of surface effects, primarily on paper, including a series of large diptychs. The exhibition will also include works from several of Serra’s drawing series made in the 1990s, such as Deadweights (1991), Weight and Measure (1994), Rounds (1996-97), and out-of-rounds (1999-2000).

In Serra’s recent drawings, such as the Solids series (2007-2008), the accumulation of black paintstick on paper is extremely dense and nearly the entire surface of the paper is covered in a layer of viscous pigment. To make these drawings, Serra pours melted paintstick onto a table, puts a layer of wire mesh or screen on top, and then transfers the pigment on to a sheet of paper by pressing a hard marking tool onto the back of the paper.

Richard Serra

Richard Serra (b. 1938, San Francisco, California) studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduating with a B.A. in English literature. Serra then received an MFA from Yale University. The artist’s first New York exhibition was at the Leo Castelli Warehouse in 1967. His work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1977), Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris (1983), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1986 and 2007), Serpentine Gallery, London (1992), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1992), The Drawing Center, New York (1994), Dia: Chelsea, New York (1997), Guggenheim Bilbao (2005), Grand Palais, Paris (2008), and Kunsthaus Bregenz (2009), among other museums.

The artist has received numerous awards and accolades for his achievements. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary doctorates from Yale, Harvard, and other universities. In 2008 he was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Academy and was decorated with the Order of the Arts and Letters of Spain. He received the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture from the Japan Art Association in 1994, the Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste in 2002, and the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2010.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by the three co-curators and Magdalena Dabrowski, as well as contributions by Richard Shiff, the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and Lizzie Borden, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker and writer. Also included in the catalogue are Serra’s “Notes on Drawing”; an illustrated chronology related to the artist’s drawing production; a selected exhibition history; and a selected bibliography. The catalogue is published by The Menil Collection and distributed by Yale University Press. It is available for sale in the Menil bookstore. 230 pages. 149 quadratone illustrations. HC $50, SC $40.

This exhibition is generously supported by Laura and John Arnold, National Endowment for the Arts, Sotheby’s, Eddie Allen and Chinhui Juhn, the Frances Dittmer Family Foundation, Paul and Janet Hobby, David and Anne Kirkland, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, the Four Seasons Hotel Houston, Clare Casademont and Michael Metz, Invesco, Janie C. Lee and David B. Warren, Skadden, Arps, eEvents Group LLC, Scott and Judy Nyquist, W.S. Bellows Construction Corporation, Michael Zilkha, and the City of Houston.

Public Programs at The Menil Collection

Exhibition Preview
Thursday, March 1, 2012, from 7-9 p.m.
Preview preceded by book signing at 5 p.m.
Richard Serra in conversation with Michelle White at 6 p.m.

Cinematic Graphite
Friday, March 23, 2012, 8:00 p.m.
Inspired by the exhibition, Aurora Picture Show Curator Mary Magsamen has organized a selection of short films that explore mark-making. Videos include work by Magli Charrier, Mary Ellen Strom and Ann Carlson, Cheryl Donegan, and Robert Todd. Co-presented with Aurora Picture Show.

Panel Discussion
Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
Michelle White is joined by scholars Richard Shiff, Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin, and Gordon Hughes, Mellon Assistant Professor of Art History at Rice University, in the discussion of Richard Serra’s drawn work.

out-of-round X by Richard Serra, 1999 (photo by Rob McKeever)

First Bathroom/Woman Standing from Interiors by Laurie Simmons, 1978 (image courtesy the artist)

The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
January 21 – April 15, 2012

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) will celebrate the opening of a survey of leading women artists that examines the crucial feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and 1980s. The public reception will be this Friday, January 20, 2012, from 7 to 9 p.m. The reception will have a cash bar and modular food truck.

Deconstructivism involves taking apart and examining source material, generally borrowed from the mass media, to expose the ways commercial images reveal the mechanisms of power. Women had a particularly high stake in this kind of examination and were disproportionately represented among artists who practiced it.

Deconstructive Impulseis organized by Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.

First Bathroom/Woman Standing from Interiors by Laurie Simmons, 1978 (image courtesy the artist)

Gary Tinterow, newly appointed director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (photo by F. Carter Smith)

Antonin Baudry, Cultural Counselor of the French Embassy, will confer the insignia of Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters on Gary Tinterow on January 23, 2012.

Gary Tinterow, a distinguished curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for nearly three decades, was recently appointed director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Currently the Engelhard Chairman of Nineteenth-Century, Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan, Mr. Tinterow began working at the Metropolitan in 1983. During his tenure, he has organized some of the Museum’s most critically acclaimed and popular exhibitions, including Portraits by Ingres: Image of an Epoch (1999), Manet/Velazquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting (2003), and Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010). He was awarded “Best Exhibition Prize” from the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) for Origins of Impressionism and The Private Collection of Edgar Degas in 1995 and 1997, respectively.

The Metropolitan’s exceptional collection of nineteenth-century paintings has been shaped greatly by significant acquisitions of works by Cézanne, Degas, Delacroix, Gericault, Monet, and Van Gogh under Mr. Tinterow. He also oversaw two major renovations and reinstallations of the Nineteenth-Century European Painting and Sculpture galleries, one completed in 1993 and the other in 2007.

He has collaborated with colleagues at many national and international museums including Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, Centre Georges Pompidou, The Courtauld Gallery, London, The National Gallery, London, Museo Nacional del Prado, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (Order of Arts and Letters) was created in 1957 to recognize eminent artists and writers, as well as individuals who have contributed to furthering the arts in France and throughout the world. The Order is given out twice annually to only a few hundred people worldwide. Americans who have received the award include Paul Auster, Ornette Coleman, Agnes Gund, Marilyn Horne, Jim Jarmusch,Richard Meier, Robert Paxton, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Uma Thurman.

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.

The Texas White House at the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, Texas (photo by Mr. Holga)

Are you keeping up with our own Mr. Holga and his JFK project? Mr. Holga was in south Texas over the Thanksgiving holiday. He stopped in Salado, Center Point, Stonewall, Austin and Houston. His photographic agenda included Liz Carpenter, General Walker, President and Mrs. Johnson, the Texas White House, President Johnson’s speech, F. Trammell Crow and Congressman Albert Thomas.

Click here to read Death by Holga Road Trip before Thanksgiving on Mr. Holga’s website.

Portrait of the Artist by Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1665 (image courtesy the American Federation of Arts)

Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
June 3 through September 3, 2012

On June 3, 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), will debut the exhibition Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London, whose three-venue national tour was announced today by the American Federation of Arts in New York. An exhibition of forty-eight masterpieces, this will be the first tour of this important group of works from the Iveagh Bequest and will provide a unique opportunity to see these superb paintings outside the United Kingdom. Most of these paintings have never traveled to the States before, and many of them have rarely been seen outside Kenwood.

Donated to the nation by Edward Cecil Guinness (1847–1927), 1st Earl of Iveagh and heir to the world’s most successful brewery, the Iveagh Bequest resides at Kenwood House, a neoclassical villa in London that was remodeled by Robert Adam in the eighteenth century. The collection was shaped by the tastes of the Belle Epoque—Europe’s equivalent to America’s Gilded Age—when the earl shared the cultural stage and art market with other industry titans such as the Rothschilds, J. Pierpont Morgan and Henry Clay Frick. Acquired mainly from 1887 to 1891, the earl’s purchases reveal a penchant for the portraiture, landscape and seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish works typically found in English aristocratic collections. While the majority of the paintings in the exhibition are from the Iveagh Bequest, several are drawn from the works acquired specifically for display at Kenwood. Pauline Willis, AFA’s Chief Operating Officer, remarked, “We are extremely proud to be able to give greater exposure to this magnificent selection of paintings while Kenwood undergoes a major refurbishment.” Simon Thurley, Chief Executive for English Heritage, commented, “The collection of works of art on display at Kenwood is one of the most important in England, and we are thrilled that works from this collection will travel across the Atlantic for the first time and find new audiences in the United States.”

Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London will follow this schedule:

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston – June 3 through September 3, 2012
• Milwaukee Art Museum – October 4, 2012 through January 6, 2013
• Seattle Art Museum – February 14 through May 19, 2013

The collection is particularly strong in works by such Golden Age eighteenth-century English portraitists as Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough and George Romney, whose depictions of society beauties of the Georgian era, also known as England’s “Age of Aristocracy,” held a great appeal for Lord Iveagh. Among the several fine Gainsboroughs in the exhibition is the sumptuous full-length portrait Mary, Countess Howe (c. 1764), an image of both aristocratic elegance and of a landowner among her properties. Such full-length portraits of ladies in nature were very popular during this period, owing to a great admiration for the aristocratic portraits of Van Dyck. Along with such aristocratic women, the collection’s “virtual harem” of English portraits features celebrity demimondes, among them Emma Hart—later Lady Hamilton—who served as Romney’s muse, and Kitty Fisher—one of the most celebrated courtesans in London society.

Among the works by Dutch and Flemish masters in the exhibition is Rembrandt’s sublime Portrait of the Artist (c. 1665), one of the artist’s last self-portraits and one of only a few of his many self-portraits that show him in the act of painting. Fifty-two years old when he created it, he found little reason to dress formally or pretend to be something other than the great painter that he was. The several paintings of children purchased by Lord Iveagh often served as vanitas-like reminders of the fleeting innocence of youth. When painting Miss Murray (1824–26), a portrait of a three-year-old girl gathering flowers, Thomas Lawrence wrote to his patron, Miss Murray’s father, “All I can do is snatch (and I hope for some century or so secure) this fleeting beauty and expression so singular in the child before the change takes place that some few months may bring.”

The taste for Dutch and Italian landscapes and seascapes among English eighteenth-century collectors was inspired by their travels in Europe on the Grand Tour. The influx of such works into England influenced a number of English painters, including Reynolds and Gainsborough, both of whom collected Dutch landscape paintings. Joseph Mallord William Turner’s particular interest in Dutch Old Master seascapes is exemplified in A Coast Scene with Fishermen Hauling a Boat Ashore (1803–04).

Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London presents a selection of exceptional paintings, among them some of the world’s great masterpieces. Prior to the opening of the exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Rembrandt’s haunting masterpiece Portrait of the Artist will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (early April–late May 2012). It will hang near the museum’s own Self-portrait by Rembrandt (1660), providing a rare opportunity to compare the two works, which, although close in date, are very different in scale, format and expression.

The exhibition is organized by the American Federation of Arts and English Heritage with support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Generous funding for the MFAH presentation is provided by Mr. and Mrs. Rodney H. Margolis and Mr. and Mrs. Melvyn L. Wolff.

The guest curator is Susan Jenkins, a curator at English Heritage who selected the works in the exhibition in tandem with other English Heritage curators.

Publication

The AFA publication will include an illustrated checklist and texts by the guest curator, Julius Bryant, Keeper of Word and Image at the Victoria & Albert Museum and formerly Chief Curator at English Heritage, and Walter Liedtke, Curator of European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

American Federation of Arts

The AFA is a nonprofit institution that organizes art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues and develops educational materials and programs for children and adults. The AFA’s mission is to enrich the public’s experience of art and understanding of culture by organizing and touring a diverse offering of exhibitions embracing all aspects of art history. The AFA has organized or circulated approximately 3,000 exhibitions with presentations in museums in every state, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa that have been viewed by more than 10 million people. For more information about its exhibitions, publications, artist talks (ArtTalks), membership, cultural travel program (ArtScapes) and online resources, including family guides and podcasts, see www.afaweb.org.

English Heritage

English Heritage is the government’s lead advisory body for the historic environment in England and is responsible for the national collection of historic sites and monuments, as well as their contents and archives. The collection comprises more than 400 historic places and spans 5,000 years of architecture, from prehistoric sites to nuclear bunkers. It includes Stonehenge and much of Hadrian’s Wall, the ruins of the greatest medieval abbeys, the world’s first iron bridge, Charles Darwin’s diaries and the Duke of Wellington’s boots. www.english-heritage.org.uk

Kenwood House, London

Set in beautiful landscaped parkland in the midst of Hampstead Heath, Kenwood House is one of the most magnificent visitor attractions in London. This elegant villa, remodeled by Robert Adam in the eighteenth century, houses a superb collection of paintings that includes masterpieces by Rembrandt, Vermeer, Turner and Gainsborough, as well as the Suffolk collection of rare Jacobean portraits. While the exhibition is on tour, Kenwood House will be undergoing a major repair and conservation program. The work will make the roof wind and weather tight—protecting the magnificent interior and important art collection from serious leaks and damp—and will also repair and revive Kenwood’s beautiful exterior. The project will be complete in 2013.

Portrait of the Artist by Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1665 (image courtesy the American Federation of Arts)

After Mondrian by Serrie Levine, 1989

Highlights of the Peter Blum Edition Archive
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
December 23, 2011 through February 20, 2012

Highlights of the Peter Blum Edition Archive, opening at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) December 23, 2011, will present a focused selection of The Peter Blum Edition Archive, a landmark MFAH acquisition encompassing all of the prints, books, and related preparatory materials Peter Blum had released from 1981 through June 1994.

Blum, a New York print publisher who collaborates with leading contemporary European and American artists, is considered to have the best eye of his generation. The 1996 acquisition of over 1,500 objects was spearheaded by Barry Walker, the recently retired MFAH Curator of Prints and Drawings, who originally displayed the collection in the 2006 exhibition Singular Multiples: The Peter Blum Edition Archive, 1980-1994.

The Peter Blum Edition Archive contains 44 finished projects by 23 artists, and Highlights of the Peter Blum Edition Archive will present 7 of the collection’s most famous portfolios along with their related preparatory materials. These portfolios will be double- and triple-hung to lend the gallery space an intimate, salon-like quality. The works will be on view through February 20, 2012 in the Cameron Foundation Gallery of the Audrey Jones Beck Building, 5601 Main Street.

Eric Fischl’s renowned Year of the Drowned Dog is a composite of six color prints that, when combined, operate as a pictorial game with a complex narrative. The first component is a triptych of a Caribbean beach panorama and the second consists of three separate smaller sheets (mother and child observing the dog of the title, three sailors and a walking man) that overlap the panorama. Accompanying the final work will be trial proofs of the boy with the dog, showing how Fischl experimented with the curvature of the boy’s back and, later, the inks and color balance.

A portfolio of 10 color woodcuts by figurative painter Alex Katz , from the Tremor in the Morning (1986) series, will be on view. These works are woodblock prints based on paintings of couples that the artist created in the 1970s.

A suite of nine photolithographs by Barbara Kruger, Untitled (We will no longer be seen and not heard) (1985), were created by the artist when Blum offered her the chance to collaborate with leading lithographer Maurice Sanchéz. Kruger had never made prints before but this portfolio, like Kruger’s other work, is a feminist commentary. Each print includes a found image paired with a word and, when viewed together, forms the sentence, “We will no longer be seen and not heard.”

Four severely formal geometric abstractions comprise Meltdown (1989), by Sherrie Levine, from the series Afters. To create the color woodblock prints, Levine scanned photographs of paintings by Mondrian, Kirchner, Monet and Duchamp into a computer, reduced the pixilation, divided the images into rectangular grids and averaged the colors of the grids’ squares.

Brice Marden’s portfolio of 25 intaglio sheets, Etchings to Rexroth (1986), was created when Blum invited the artist to make a print portfolio. Printer Jennifer Melby helped inspire the artist to work from his twig-and-ink sketches, applying sugarlift aquatint and etching techniques to emphasize texture.

David Rabinowitch’s Birth of Constructivism – Sequence for Vertov I – VII (1993) is a suite of seven intaglio prints that celebrates the industrial world by featuring mechanized dancing shapes. Each print can stand alone but together they create a storyboard. Proofs of III will accompany the portfolio, revealing Rabinowitch’s process as he made an impression of the key plate and conceived of the circle-within-circle design.

Finally, a portfolio of five works by Terry Winters, Furrows (1989), will also be on view. Winters worked with printer and paper-maker François LaFranca to make his first-ever woodblock prints, using Japanese calligraphy tools to carve designs based on human anatomy. He printed these onto wood with a design emphasis on the wood grain patterns.

Also on view in the Millennium Corridor of the Audrey Jones Beck Building (near Café Express) through March 20, 2012 is a new Peter Blum Edition, Reconstructions. In Reconstructions, Huma Bhabha draws colossal figures, feet, and other forms over photographs of landscapes littered with abandoned foundations that she took in her native Pakistan, and then translated the images into prints. The portfolio references figurative connections to the landscape, ancient structures, religion, time, and decay. This recent acquisition extends the MFAH’s Peter Blum Edition Archive and exemplifies Blum’s exacting standards for the master print.

After Mondrian by Serrie Levine, 1989