Thursday 21 November 2013

Aleksandr Vesnin


Aleksandr Vesnin
Alexander Vesnin
A.Rodchenko 1924 portrait of A.Vesnin.jpg
Photo by Alexander Rodchenko, 1924 (fragment)
Born May 28 (16), 1883
Yuryevets
Died September 7, 1959
Moscow
Nationality Russian Empire, Soviet Union
Alma mater Institute of Civil Engineers,
Saint Petersburg

Practice Vesnin brothers
Buildings Dnieper Hydroelectric Station
ZiL Palace of Culture
Alexander Aleksandrovic Vesnin (Russian: Александр Александрович Веснин) (1883, Yuryevets – 1959, Moscow), together with his brothers Leonid and Viktor, was a leading light of Constructivist architecture. He is best known for his meticulous perspectival drawings such as Leningrad Pravda of 1924.
In addition to being an architect, he was a theatre designer and painter, frequently working with Lyubov Popova on designs for workers' festivals, and for the theatre of Tairov. He was one of the exhibitors in the pioneering Constructivist exhibition 5x5=25 in 1921. He was the head, along with Moisei Ginzburg, of the Constructivist OSA Group. Among the completed buildings designed by the Vesnin brothers in the later 1920s were department stores, a club for former Tsarist political prisoners as well as the Likachev Works Palace of Culture in Moscow. Vesnin was a vocal supporter of the works of Le Corbusier, and acclaimed his Tsentrosoyuz building as 'the best building constructed in Moscow for a century'. After the return to Classicism in the Soviet Union Vesnin had no further major projects.
Abstract Composition. 1915c. M.T. Abraham Foundation

Selected Work

  • 1934 Commissariat of Heavy Industry Project
  • 1930 Oilworkers' Club, Baku [1]
  • 1930-36 Likachev Palace of Culture, Moscow
  • 1928 House of Film Actors, Moscow
  • 1926 Mostorg department store, Moscow
  • 1924 Leningradskaya Pravda project
  • 1922-23 Palace of Labor project. [2]

References

  • S.N Khan-Magomedov, Alexander Vesnin and Russian Constructivism (Thames and Hudson, 1988)
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Wednesday 13 November 2013

Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko

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This article is about the Russian artist. For the fictional Star Trek character, see Alexander Rozhenko.
Alexander Rodchenko
Birth name Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko
Born December 5, 1891
St. Petersburg
Died December 3, 1956 (aged 64)
Moscow
Nationality Russian
Field painting, photography
Movement Constructivism
Alexander Rodchenko Dance. An Objectless Composition, 1915.
Aleksander Mikhailovich Rodchenko (Russian: Алекса́ндр Миха́йлович Ро́дченко; 5 December [O.S. 23 November] 1891 – December 3, 1956) was a Russian artist, sculptor, photographer and graphic designer. He was one of the founders of constructivism and Russian design; he was married to the artist Varvara Stepanova.
Rodchenko was one of the most versatile Constructivist and Productivist artists to emerge after the Russian Revolution. He worked as a painter and graphic designer before turning to photomontage and photography. His photography was socially engaged, formally innovative, and opposed to a painterly aesthetic. Concerned with the need for analytical-documentary photo series, he often shot his subjects from odd angles—usually high above or down below—to shock the viewer and to postpone recognition. He wrote: "One has to take several different shots of a subject, from different points of view and in different situations, as if one examined it in the round rather than looked through the same key-hole again and again."

Life and career

Rodchenko was born in St. Petersburg to a working-class family. His family moved to Kazan after the death of his father, in 1909.[1] When Rodchenko decided to become an artist, he hadn't had any exposure to the art world. He drew much inspiration from his early influences, which were mainly art magazines that were available to him. In 1910, he began studies under Nikolai Feshin and Georgii Medvedev at the Kazan School of Art, where he met Varvara Stepanova, whom he later married.
After 1914, he continued his artistic training at the Stroganov Institute in Moscow. At this early time in his career, he began creating his first abstract drawings, influenced by the Suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, in 1915. The following year, he participated in "The Store" exhibition organized by Vladimir Tatlin, who was another formative influence in his development as an artist.
Rodchenko's work was heavily influenced by Cubism and Futurism, as well as by Malevich's Suprematist compositions, which featured geometric forms deployed against a white background. While Rodchenko was a student of Tatlin’s he was also his assistant, and the interest in figuration that characterized Rodchenko's early work disappeared as he experimented with the elements of design. He utilized a compass and ruler in creating his paintings, with the goal of eliminating expressive brushwork.[2]
Rodchenko was appointed Director of the Museum Bureau and Purchasing Fund by the Bolshevik Government in 1920. He was responsible for the reorganization of art schools and museums. He taught from 1920 to 1930 at the Higher Technical-Artistic Studios (VKhUTEMAS/VKhUTEIN).
In 1921 he became a member of the Productivist group, with Stepanova and Aleksei Gan which advocated the incorporation of art into everyday life. He gave up painting in order to concentrate on graphic design for posters, books, and films. He was deeply influenced by the ideas and practice of the filmmaker Dziga Vertov, with whom he worked intensively in 1922.
Impressed by the photomontage of the German Dadaists, Rodchenko began his own experiments in the medium, first employing found images in 1923, and from 1924 on shooting his own photographs as well.[3] His first published photomontage illustrated Mayakovsky's poem, "About This", in 1923.
From 1923 to 1928 Rodchenko collaborated closely with Mayakovsky (of whom he took several striking portraits) on the design and layout of LEF and Novy LEF, the publications of Constructivist artists. Many of his photographs appeared in or were used as covers for these journals. His images eliminated unnecessary detail, emphasized dynamic diagonal composition, and were concerned with the placement and movement of objects in space. During this period, he and Stepanova did the well-known painted panels of the Mosselprom building in Moscow. Their daughter, Varvara Rodchenko, was born in 1925.
Throughout the 1920s, Rodchenko's work was very abstract. In the 1930s, with the changing Party guidelines governing artistic practice, he concentrated on sports photography and images of parades and other choreographed movements.
Rodchenko joined the October circle of artists in 1928 but was expelled three years later being charged with "formalism". He returned to painting in the late 1930s, stopped photographing in 1942, and produced abstract expressionist works in the 1940s. He continued to organize photography exhibitions for the government during these years. He died in Moscow in 1956.
Rodchenko and Stepanova, 1920s

Influence

Much of the work of 20th century graphic designers is a direct result of Rodchenko's earlier work in the field. His influence has been pervasive enough that it would be nearly impossible to single out all of the designers whose work he has influenced. American conceptual artist Barbara Kruger owes a debt to Rodchenko's work.
His portrait of Lilya Brik[4] has inspired a number of subsequent works, including the cover art for a number of music albums. Among them are the influential Dutch punk band The Ex, which published a series of 7" vinyl albums, each with a variation on the Lilya Brik portrait theme, the cover of Mike + the Mechanics album Word of Mouth, and the cover of the Franz Ferdinand album You Could Have It So Much Better. The poster for One-Sixth Part of the World was the basis for the cover of "Take Me Out", also by Franz Ferdinand.

The end of painting

In 1921, Rodchenko executed what were arguably some of the first true monochromes (artworks of one color). These paintings were first displayed in the 5x5=25 exhibition in Moscow. For artists of the Russian Revolution, Rodchenko's radical action was full of utopian possibility. It marked the end of easel painting – perhaps even the end of art – along with the end of bourgeois norms and practices. It cleared the way for the beginning of a new Russian life, a new mode of production, a new culture. Rodchenko later proclaimed, "I reduced painting to its logical conclusion and exhibited three canvases: red, blue, and yellow. I affirmed: it's all over."[5]

See also

References and sources

References
  1. Jump up ^ John E. Bowlt, "Aleksandr Rodchenko Experiments for the Future: Diaries, Essays, Letters, and Other Writings," Museum of Modern Art New York, 2005, Page 31.
  2. Jump up ^ Milner, John, "Rodchenko, Aleksandr", Oxford Art Online
  3. Jump up ^ Mrazkova, Daniela and Remes, Vladimir "Early Soviet Photographers." Museum of Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, 1982, ISBN 0-905836-27-8
  4. Jump up ^ "1924 portrait". Picasaweb.google.com. 2007-09-09. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
  5. Jump up ^ Akbar, Arifa (2009-01-27). "Drawing a blank: Russian constructivist makes late Tate debut". Independent.co.uk. Retrieved 2012-07-30.
Sources


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Tuesday 12 November 2013

Alberto Giacometti



Alberto Giacometti

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Alberto-Giacometti,-etching-(author-Jan-Hladík-2002).jpg Jump to: navigation, search
Alberto Giacometti

Portrait of A. Giacometti by Jan Hladík, 2002, etching
Born 10 October 1901
Borgonovo, Stampa, Graubünden, Switzerland
Died 11 January 1966 (aged 64)
Chur, Graubünden, Switzerland
Nationality Swiss
Field Sculpture, Painting, Drawing
Training The School of Fine Arts, Geneva
Movement Surrealism, Expressionism, Cubism, Formalism
Awards "Grand Prize for Sculpture" at 1962 Venice Biennale
Alberto Giacometti (Italian pronunciation: [alˈbɛrto dʒakoˈmetti]; 10 October 1901 – 11 January 1966) was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter. Alberto was the eldest of four children and was interested in art from an early age.

Early life


"Woman of Venice II", 1956, painted bronze sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, now part of the Swiss municipality of Stampa, near the Italian border. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the Italian Inquisition. His father, Giovanni Giacometti, was a painter. Alberto attended the School of Fine Arts in Geneva.
In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, an associate of Auguste Rodin. It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso, Bror Hjorth and Balthus.
Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to, his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer). This was followed by a unique artistic phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated.[1] Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisaged through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife." After his marriage to Annette Arm in 1946 his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman.
His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated, are severely attenuated, and are the result of continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his favorite models was his younger brother Diego Giacometti.[2] A third brother, Bruno Giacometti, was a noted architect.

Later years


Alberto Giacometti by Reginald Gray. Paris.1965. published by The New York Times

Three Men Walking II, 1949, painted bronze sculpture Metropolitan Museum of Art

Woman with Her Throat Cut, 1932 (cast 1949), Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Cat, 1954, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Current 100 Swiss Franc banknote, front

Current 100 Swiss Franc banknote, back
In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction. Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square",[3] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper", according to his biographer, James Lord.[4] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project.
In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale, and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti - The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970.
In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he travelled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived.
Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease (pericarditis) and chronic bronchitis at the Kantonsspital in Chur, Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents. In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, French foreign minister Roland Dumas, was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer. The auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation.[5]

Artistic analysis

Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls 'blocs of sensation' (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast."
Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning. "All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces... So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life."
A new exhibition in Paris, since September 2011, shows how Giacometti strongly drew his inspiration for his work from Etruscan art.[6]

Legacy

Exhibitions

Giacometti's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including most recently Pushkin Museum, Moscow (2008); “The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti,” Centre Pompidou, Paris (2007-2008); Kunsthal Rotterdam (2008); Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2009), Buenos Aires (2012); and Kunsthalle Hamburg (2013).

Public collections

Giacometti's work is displayed in numerous public collections, including the:

Art Foundations

The Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti, having received a bequest from Alberto Giacometti's widow Annette, holds a collection of circa 5,000 works, frequently displayed around the world through exhibitions and long-term loans. A public interest institution, the Foundation was created in 2003 and aims at promoting, disseminating, preserving and protecting Alberto Giacometti's work.
The Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung established in Zürich in 1965, holds a smaller collection of works acquired from the collections of Pittsburgh industrialist G. David Thompson.

Alberto Giacometti
Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Notable sales

In November 2000 a Giacometti bronze, Grande Femme Debout I, sold for $14.3 million.[8] Grande Femme Debout II was bought by the Gagosian Gallery for $27.4 million at Christie's auction in New York City on May 6, 2008.[9]
L'Homme qui marche I, a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man, became one of the most expensive works of art and the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction on February 2, 2010 when it sold for £65 million (US$104.3 million) at Sotheby's, London.[10][11] Grande tête mince, a large bronze bust, sold for $53.3 million just three months later.

Other legacy

Giacometti created the monument on the grave of Gerda Taro at Père Lachaise Cemetery.[12]
In 2001 he was included in the Painting the Century 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900-2000 exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Giacometti and his sculpture L'Homme qui marche I appear on the current 100 Swiss Franc banknote.[13]
According to Dr. Michael Peppiatt in a lecture at Cambridge University on July 8, 2010, Giacometti, who had a friendship with author/playwright Samuel Beckett, created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of "Waiting For Godot".

Notes

  1. Jump up ^ New York Times article on The Women of Giacometti exhibition, Pace Wildenstein Gallery 2005 [1]
  2. Jump up ^ Tate Collection: Seated Man by Alberto Giacometti Retrieved July 13, 2007.
  3. Jump up ^ http://www.christies.com/LotFinder/LotDetailsPrintable.aspx?intObjectID=5075599
  4. Jump up ^ James Lord, Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1986, pp. 331-332 ISBN ISBN 978-0-374-52525-5 ISBN 0374525250
  5. Jump up ^ "Conviction Upheld Against Former French FM in Giacometti Fraud". May 10, 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-16
  6. Jump up ^ Giacometti and The Etruscans, La Pinacothèque de Paris
  7. Jump up ^ http://leeum.samsungfoundation.org/html_eng/exhibition/exhibition_view.asp
  8. Jump up ^ "Art record Picasso painting goes for £39m at auction". The Guardian (London). 2000-11-10. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
  9. Jump up ^ Afp.google.com, Monet fetches record price at New York auction
  10. Jump up ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8497287.stm Giacometti sculpture fetches £65m at Sotheby's auction
  11. Jump up ^ Alberto Giacometti's Walking Man I Sells for a Record-Breaking $104,327,006 at Sotheby's
  12. Jump up ^ Robert Whelan, "Robert Capa, the definitive collection", p8, Phaidon press 2001 ISBN 978-0-7148-4449-7
  13. Jump up ^ Schweizer Nationalbank

References

  • Jacques Dupin (1962) "Alberto Giacometti", Paris, Maeght
  • Reinhold Hohl (1971) "Alberto Giacometti", Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje
  • Die Sammlung der Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung (1990), Zürich, Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft
  • Alberto Giacometti. Sculptures - peintures - dessins. Paris, Musée d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1991-92.
  • Jean Soldini (1993) "Alberto Giacometti. Le colossal, la mère, le sacré", Lausanne, L'Age d'Homme
  • David Sylvester (1996) Looking at Giacometti, Henry Holt & Co.
  • Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966. Kunsthalle Wien, 1996
  • James Lord (1997) Giacometti: A Biography, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
  • Alberto Giacometti. Kunsthaus Zürich, 2001; New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 2001-2002.
  • Yves Bonnefoy (2006) Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, New edition, Flammarion
  • Andreas Weiland, "The Sculptures of Alberto Giacometti / Seen in the Kunsthal Rotterdam (Giacometti Exhibition, October 18, 2008 – February 8, 2009)", in: Art in Society, issue # 10
http://www.art-in-society.de/AS10/Giacometti-3/Giacometti.html
  • Laurie Wilson, (2003) Alberto Giacometti: Myth Magic and the Man (Yale University Press)

Bibliography

  • Alberto Giacometti, Yves Bonnefoy, Assouline Publishing (February 22, 2011)
  • In Giacometti's Studio, Michael Peppiatt, Yale University Press (December 14, 2010)
  • Alberto Giacometti: A Biography of His Work, Yves Bonnefoy, New edition, Flammarion (2006)
  • Giacometti: A Biography, James Lord, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1997)
  • Looking at Giacometti, David Sylvester, Henry Holt & Co. (1996)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Herbert Matter & Mercedes Matter, Harry N Abrams (September 1987)
  • A Giacometti Portrait, James Lord, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (July 1, 1980)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Reinhold Hohl, H. N. Abrams (1972)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Reinhold Hohl, Stuttgart: Gerd Hatje (1971)
  • Alberto Giacometti, Jacques Dupin, Paris, Maeght(1962)
  • "The Dream, the Sphinx, and the Death of T", Alberto Giacometti, X magazine, Vol.1, No.1 (November 1959); An Anthology from X (Oxford University Press 1988).

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Alberto Giacometti.
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Tuesday 5 November 2013

Albert Oehlen, Rainald Goetz

Albert Oehlen, Rainald Goetz: D.I.E
Artists’ book with drawings by Albert Oehlen and texts by Rainald Goetz
Texts in German
Hardcover, clothbound
24 x 33 cm
36 pages
13 tipped-in color illustrations
300 copies, numbered,
copies nrs. 1 to 50 signed by the artists
ISBN 978-3-935567-50-3
out of print

   Albert Oehlen and Rainald Goetz have been friends for a long time and have realized many projects in tandem. With D.I.E they now publish their first artists’ book. Rainald Goetz has put 17 concretist texts of very few words opposite 13 abstract drawings by Oehlen, following the painter’s visual gestures in a like-minded spirit. Every line and squiggle in Oehlen’s large-format charcoal drawings falls in with an associative tangle that completely denies coherency. The texts on the pages facing the illustrations rule out any kind of makeshift sense: they are sound, image, narrative expectation, and argument. The book itself serves as an open space where free association rules, only pulled back by reason. It becomes an opening for letters and lines, images and words, a space for contents, moods, off-roads, and plausibilities.

The artists’ book D.I.E is published in a limited edition of 300 numbered copies, the first 50 of them signed by both artists. All texts are in German.


http://www.holzwarth-publications.de/pages_buecher/_eng/oehlen-goetz.html
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Tuesday 22 October 2013

Albert Gleizes

Albert Gleizes

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"Gleizes" redirects here. For the French writer, see Jean-Antoine Gleizes.
Albert Gleizes
Albert Gleizes, c.1920, photograph by Pierre Choumoff..jpg
Albert Gleizes, circa 1920
Birth name Albert Léon Gleizes
Born December 8, 1881
Paris
Died June 23, 1953 (aged 71)
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence
Nationality French
Field painting, writing
Movement Cubism, Abstract art, Abstraction-Création
Albert Gleizes (8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953), was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du "Cubisme", 1912. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists. He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his many theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany, where especially at the Bauhaus his ideas were given thoughtful consideration. Gleizes spent four crucial years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, founder of the Ernest-Renan Association, and both a founder and participant in the Abbaye de Creteil.[1] Gleizes exhibited regularly at Léonce Rosenberg’s Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris; he was also a founder, organizer and director of Abstraction-Création. From the mid-1920s to the late 1930s much of his energy went into writing (e.g., La Peinture et ses lois (Paris, 1923), Vers une conscience plastique: La Forme et l’histoire (Paris, 1932) and Homocentrisme (Sablons, 1937).[2]

Early life

Albert Gleizes, 1909, Bords de la Marne, oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lyon
Albert Gleizes, 1910, La Femme aux Phlox (Woman with Phlox)), oil on canvas, 81 x 100 cm, exhibited Armory Show, New York, 1913, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Born Albert Léon Gleizes and raised in Paris, he was the son of a fabric designer who ran a large industrial design workshop. He was also the nephew of Léon Comerre, a successful portrait painter who won the 1875 Prix de Rome. The young Albert Gleizes did not like school and often skipped classes to idle away the time writing poetry and wandering through the nearby Montmartre cemetery. Finally, after completing his secondary schooling, Gleizes spent four years in the 72nd Infantry Regiment of the French army (Abbeville, Picardie) then began pursuing a career as a painter. Gleizes began to paint self-taught around 1901 in the Impressionist tradition. His first landscapes from around Courbevoie appear particularly inspired by Sisley or Pissarro.[3] Although clearly related to Pissarro in technique, Gleizes' particular view-points as well as the composition and conception of early works represent a clear departure from the style of late Impressionism. The density with which these works are painted and their solid framework suggest affinities with Divisionism which were often noted by early critics.[1]
Gleizes was only twenty-one years of age when his work titled La Seine à Asnières was exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902. The following year Gleizes exhibited two paintings at the Salon d'Automne. In 1905 Gleizes was among the founders of l'Association Ernest-Renan, a union of students opposed to military propaganda. Gleizes was in charge of the Section littéraire et artistique, organizing theater productions and poetry readings. At the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 1906), Gleizes exhibited Jour de marché en banlieue. Tending towards 1907 his work evolved into a Post-Impressionist style with strong Naturalist and Symbolist components.[3]
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Sunday 20 October 2013

Agnes Denes

Agnes Denes

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Agnes Denes
Tree Mountain sketch.jpg
Tree Mountain located in Ylöjärvi, Finland
Born 1931 (age 81–82)
Budapest, Hungary
Nationality American
Training New School, Columbia University
Movement Conceptual Art
Works Visual Philosophy, Wheatfield, Tree Mountain
Website http://www.agnesdenesstudio.com/
Agnes Denes (Dénes Ágnes; Budapest, 1931) is a Hungarian-born American conceptual artist based in New York. She is known for works in a wide range of mediums - from poetry and philosophy writings, to complex hand and computer rendered diagrams (which she terms Visual Philosophy), sculpture, and international environmental installations, such as Wheatfield -- A Confrontation (1982), a two-acre wheatfield in downtown Manhattan.[1]

Biography and Early Career

Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1931,[2] her family survived the Nazi occupation and moved to Sweden in the mid-1940s. As a teenager, they relocated again to the United States. She has said that the repeated change in language caused her to focus on the visual arts - having "suddenly been silenced."[3] She studied painting at the New School and Columbia University in New York, and exhibited and sold some of her work.[3] She soon abandoned painting, due to the constraints of the canvas, and focused broadly on ideas she could explore in other mediums.[1] "I found its vocabulary limiting"[3]
She has since participated in more than 450 exhibitions at galleries and museums throughout the world, and has written 6 books.[4] At some point in the late 1960s-1970s, she was married and has one son, Robert T. Frankel.[5]

Selected works

What ties it all together is Ms. Denes’s insistence on marrying ambitious intellectual ideas with exquisite formal execution. In contrast to many of her conceptual and land-art peers, she has always been deeply involved with drawing. - Carol Kino, New York Times.[1]

Ecological

In the history of art there have been a few artists’ artists—individuals who have emphasized in their work the raising of provocative questions and who have also tested the limits of art by taking it into new, unforeseen areas and by using it for distinctly new functions. Agnes Denes is one of these special artists. -Art historian Robert Hobbs, 1992[6]
As a pioneer of Land Art, Agnes Denes created Rice/Tree/Burial in 1968 in Sullivan County, New York. Acknowledged as the first site-specific performance piece with ecological concerns,[1] it was enacted ten years later on an expanded scale at Artpark in Lewiston, New York. This performance piece involved planting rice seeds in a field in upstate New York, chaining surrounding trees and burying a time capsule filled with copies of her haiku. “It was about communication with the earth,” Ms. Denes said, “and communicating with the future.”"[1][8]
Wheatfield -- A Confrontation, 1982, by Agnes Denes.jpg
Arguably her best known work. It was created during a six-month period in the spring, summer, and fall of 1982 when Denes, with the support of the Public Art Fund, planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of rubble-strewn landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan (now the site of Battery Park City and the World Financial Center).
A monumental earthwork reclamation project and the first man-made virgin forest, situated in Ylöjärvi, Western Finland. The site was dedicated by the President of Finland upon its completion in 1996 and is legally protected for the next four hundred years.
6000 trees of an endangered species with varying heights at maturity were planted into five spirals by the artist, creating a step pyramid for each spiral when the trees are fullgrown. The trees help alleviate serious land erosion and desertification threatening Australia.
A 25 year master plan to unite a 100 kilometer-long string of forts dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Incorporating water and flood management, urban planning, historical preservation, landscaping, and tourism into a single plan.
  • North Waterfront Park Masterplan, Berkeley, California, 1988-91. Site plan and art concept.[19]
A conceptual masterplan was developed for the conversion of a 97-acre municipal landfill, surrounded by water on three sides in the San Francisco Bay, into an oasis for people and nature.

Visual Philosophy

Ms. Denes as a highly original thinker and visualizer whose work rewards the close attention it demands. -Grace Glueck, New York Times.[20]
  • Agnes Denes - Study of Distortions, 1972.jpg
Agnes Denes drawings in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian Institution Museums
Beginning in 1968, she began an intensive exploration of philosophy through art. The result was "an amazing body of work, distinguished by its intellectual rigor, aesthetic beauty, conceptual analysis, and environmental concern." -Jill Hartz, retrospective editor, Cornell University[5]
  • Paradox and Essence (Philosophical Drawings), 1976, Published by Tau/ma Press, Rome, Italy, in English and Italian. Edition of 200; 60 pages[21]
  • Sculptures of the Mind, 1976, Published by the University of Akron Press, Akron, Ohio. Edition of 1,000, 250 signed and numbered; 50 pages[22]
  • Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space: Map Projections (from the Study of Distortions Series, 1973-1979), 1979. Published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, New York. Edition of 200 hardback copies in silver foil, signed and numbered by the artist; edition of 600 in paperback; 100 pages, color and black and white throughout, 29 original drawings specially created for the book, 22 transparent pages.[23]
  • Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space-Map Projections, The Doughnut (tangent torus) By Agnes Denes, 1980.jpeg
  • Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space-Map Projections, The Pyramid, By Agnes Denes, 1980.jpeg
  • Study of Distortions; Isometric Systems in Isotropic Space-Map Projections, The Cube, By Agnes Denes, 1978.jpeg
Original drawings for Isometric Systems, from the Museum of Modern Art Collection
  • Early Philosophical Drawings, Monoprints, and Sculpture 1970-1973[24]

Sculpture

A gallery exhibition can only suggest how far and wide the polymathic Ms. Denes has ranged over material and mental worlds during the past four decades. It would take a full-scale museum retrospective to do that. -Ken Johnson, New York Times 2012[25]

Writing

  • See three titles under Visual Philosophy, above.
  • Book of Dust: The Beginning and the End of Time and Thereafter 1989 Published by Visual Studies Workshop Press, Rochester, New York. Edition of 1,100 of which 200 are signed with an original artwork. Insert ("The Debate - 1 Million B.C. - 1 Million A.D.); 200 pages, 16 full-page duotones [2]
  • The Human Argument, 2008 Spring Publications, Putnam, Connecticut.[26]
  • Poetry Walk—Reflections: Pools of Thought, 2000 Charlottesville, Va.: University of Virginia Art Museum.[3]

Retrospective Cataloges

  • Agnes Denes: Perspectives, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, 1974 [4]
  • Agnes Denes: Sculptures of the Mind / Philosophical Drawings by Amerika Haus Berlin, 1978[27]
  • Agnes Denes 1968 -1980, Gary Garrels curator, Hayden Gallery, MIT, Boston, 1980[28]
  • Agnes Denes: Concept into Form, Works : 1970-1990, Arts Club of Chicago, 1990[29]
  • Agnes Denes by Jill Hartz, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, 1992 [5]
  • The Visionary Art of Agnes Denes: An Exhibition of 85 Works, Gibson Gallery, 1996 [6]
  • Project for Public Spaces, a Retrospective, Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA; 2003[30]

Public Collections

  • The Museum of Modern Art, has 14 pieces in the permanent collection.[31]
  • The Metropolitan Museum has 5 pieces in the permanent collection.[32]
  • The Whitney Museum of American Art has 3 pieces in the permanent collection.[33]
  • An additional 43 public museums include pieces in their permanent collections[34]
She is represented by Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, New York.

Awards

Four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts; Four grants from the New York State Council on the Arts; The DAAD Fellowship, Berlin, Germany (1978); American Academy of Arts and Letters Purchase Award (1985); Eugene McDermott Award in the Arts at MIT (1990);[35] Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome (1998);[36] Jill Watson Award for Transdisciplinary Achievement in the Arts from Carnegie Mellon University (1999);[37] Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2007);[38] Ambassador’s Award for Cultural Diplomacy (2008) from the American Embassy in Hungary.

External links

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