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  • Two Tahitian Women

    Two Tahitian Women

    Paul Gauguin, in full Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin, (born June 7, 1848, Paris, France—died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia), French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who sought to achieve a “primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work. The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist, and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti, French Polynesia. His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.

    In the summer of 1888 Gauguin returned to Pont-Aven, searching for what he called “a reasoned and frank return to the beginning, that is to say, to primitive art.” He was joined there by young painters, including Émile Bernard and Paul Sérusier, who also were seeking a more direct expression in their painting. Gauguin achieved a step towards this ideal in the seminal Vision After the Sermon (1888), a painting in which he used broad planes of colour, clear outlines, and simplified forms. Gauguin coined the term “Synthetism” to describe his style during this period, referring to the synthesis of his paintings’ formal elements with the idea or emotion they conveyed.

    For the next several years, Gauguin alternated between living in Paris and Brittany. In Paris he became acquainted with the avant-garde literary circles of Symbolist poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, and Paul Verlaine. These poets, who advocated abandoning traditional forms in order to embody inner emotional and spiritual life, saw their equivalent in the visual arts in the work of Gauguin. In a famous essay in the Mercure de France in 1891, the critic Albert Aurier declared Gauguin to be the leader of a group of Symbolist artists, and he defined his work as “ideational, symbolic, synthetic, subjective, and decorative.”

  • Two Lawyers Shake Hands

    Two Lawyers Shake Hands

    Honoré Daumier, in full Honoré-Victorin Daumier, (born February 20/26, 1808, Marseille, France—died February 11, 1879, Valmondois), prolific French caricaturist, painter, and sculptor especially renowned for his cartoons and drawings satirizing 19th-century French politics and society. His paintings, though hardly known during his lifetime, helped introduce techniques of Impressionism into modern art.

    His life, devoted entirely to his work, was to be divided into two parts: from 1830 to 1847 he was a lithographer, cartoonist, and sculptor; and, beginning in 1848 and lasting until 1871, he was an Impressionist painter whose art was reflected in the lithographs he continued to produce. Constant work was not a burden to him; while producing 4,000 lithographs and 4,000 illustrative drawings, he sang sentimental songs whose foolishness made him laugh, and, “unconcerned with his works, he was always out drinking cheap wine with barge captains.”

    Daumier’s sculptures have still not been sufficiently studied. The 15 or so small busts that he modelled in clay for the window of the satirical journal for which he worked and that remained there some 30 years occupy an important place in the history of sculpture. Scarcely differing from official busts, but with the accentuation of a detail that made them caricatures, they constitute an unforgettable gallery of the politicians of the July monarchy. The complete series has not been preserved: it included a Louis-Philippe, which Daumier hid, and other pieces that were broken in moving. A few copies of the busts were cast in bronze in the 20th century, and their originality is the more striking when they are compared with similar pieces of that period.

    He did not do so, however, for he had become preoccupied with new technical studies; earlier than others, he had discovered Impressionism—faces and bodies devoured by the surrounding light and becoming one with the atmosphere. He painted a great deal, and the more so as his studies in the new technique did not interest the satirical journals to which he now submitted drawings devoid of humorous meaning. He was supported by Charles Baudelaire and by that poet’s friends. The two men had met in 1845 and saw each other more frequently after 1848. Baudelaire, who “adored him,” wrote in 1857 the only significant article on Daumier to appear in the painter’s lifetime.

  • A History Of Women In Art Perception

    A History Of Women In Art Perception

    Throughout the centuries, women have been involved in making art, whether as creators and innovators of new forms of artistic expression, patrons, collectors, sources of inspiration, or significant contributors as art historians and critics.

    Women have been and continue to be integral to the institution of art, but despite being engaged with the art world in every way, many women artists have found opposition in the traditional narrative of art history. They have faced challenges due to gender biases, from finding difficulty in training to selling their work and gaining recognition. So how have women come forward as such strong voices in art and art history today, and how do we go about telling the stories of those who were forgotten by history?

    According to a story by Pliny the Elder, a Roman writer from the first century C.E., the first drawing ever made was by a woman named Dibutades, who traced the silhouette of her lover on a wall. Whether you choose to believe this account or not, it is worth noting that although Western mythology tells us that a woman was the first artist, her female successors received little attention until the end of the 20th century. From antiquity onwards, only a small sample of women found their way into the tales of the greatest artists. Even then, they were often described as unusually talented women who overcame the limitations of their gender in order to excel in what was believed to be a masculine field. British artist Mary Beale was a successful portraitist in the late 1600s, but much of her success was attributed to the fact that her husband oversaw their studio and presented her works as experiments in the painting methods he developed. Gwen John, whose self-portrait appears isolated and scrutinizing, struggled for recognition in a field dominated by men, including her accomplished brother Augustus.

    For centuries, women were systematically excluded from the records of art history. This was due to a number of factors: art forms like textiles and what we call the “decorative arts” were often dismissed as craft and not “fine art”; many women were kept from pursuing a general education, let alone arts training, and finally the men who dominated the discipline both in practice and history often believed women to be inferior artists. As artist and instructor Hans Hoffmann once said in a “compliment” to the influential abstract expressionist painter Lee Krasner in the mid-20th century: “This is so good you wouldn’t know it was done by a woman.”

  • Make Art Valuable And Important

    Make Art Valuable And Important

    For artists in the period before the modern era (before about 1800 or so), the process of selling art was different than it is now. In the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance works of art were commissioned, that is, they were ordered by a patron (the person paying for the work of art), and then made to order. A patron usually entered into a contract with an artist that specified how much he would be paid, what kinds of materials would be used, how long it would take to complete, and what the subject of the work would be. Not what we would consider artistic freedom—but it did have its advantages. You didn’t paint something and then just hope it would sell, the way artists often do now.

    One way to understand this is to think about what you “order” to have made for you today. A pizza comes to mind—ordered from the cook at the local pizza parlor—”I’ll have a large pie with pepperoni,” or a birthday cake from a baker “I’d like a chocolate cake with mocha icing and blue letters that say ‘Happy Birthday Jerry.’” Or perhaps you ordered a set of bookshelves from a carpenter or a wedding dress from a seamstress?

    Art may have the ability to cheer us up, to entertain us, but it also has the power to effect real change in the world.

    Pablo Picasso once even went so far as to declare, “Painting is not made to decorate apartments; it is an offensive and defensive instrument of war against the enemy.” Some artworks throughout history have revolutionized the way we think about politics, social issues and even art itself. From cave paintings to soup cans, princesses to soviet leaders, these are the paintings that have had an undeniable, impact on the art world and beyond.

    The oldest painting made quite the global kerfuffle – but not until 17,000 years after it was painted. In 1940, a group of young men came across a cave in the French countryside, inside of which they discovered someone of the world’s most extraordinary examples of prehistoric art. Whilst not the oldest example of human painting, the caves are one of the earliest examples of sophisticated painting, demonstrating a key moment in the human drive to make art. 

  • The Evolution of Visual Art More

    The Evolution of Visual Art More

    Art is created and enjoyed by many people for many reasons. However, one of the things that art does is extend and expand our shared common visual language. When new visual ideas are first introduced by the artist, they are often seen as shocking, and perhaps even as incomprehensible. However, with time the best and most effective of these ideas are accepted. There is nothing harder than trying to grasp what was shocking or illuminating about certain images, or ways of making images, once the shock is gone, and we have all absorbed this bit of visual data into our own vocabularies. Artists show us new ways to see familiar things, and how to interpret new situations and events through various kinds of visual shorthand. This creation of visual language may be the artist’s intention, or it may be a side effect of other purposes. So what are some of the purposes that art fulfills?

    Probably the oldest purpose of art is as a vehicle for religious ritual. From the prehistoric cave paintings of France to the Sistine Chapel, art has served religion. For centuries the Church was the primary patron of artists. In traditional societies even today, the primary purpose of art is religious or ceremonial.

    Art may also serve as a commemoration of an important event. The event may be of major historical importance, such as the coronation of Josephine by Napoleon as recorded by the artist David, or it may be important only to the participants, like the image of a wedding or a baptism.

    Art has often served as propaganda or social commentary. Propaganda images are attempts to persuade us toward particular viewpoints or actions promoted by public or private institutions such as political parties, lobbyists, governments, or religious groups. The propaganda purpose may be one we approve of, such as World War II efforts to get women behind the war effort, as epitomized in Norman Rockwell’s Rosie the Riveter. It might also be a purpose we disapprove of. In either case, the power of visual images has frequently been used to persuade masses of people to accept beliefs, take action, or follow leaders. The artist as social commentator may simply make us more aware of the human condition as he/she perceives it, without suggesting particular action. All societies engage in propaganda, but here are some links to propaganda art created in China, and by the Allies during World War I. and during World War II.

    Art may be simply a means of recording of visual data— telling the “truth” about what we see. After the Renaissance, artists became preoccupied with new ways of capturing reality such as the use of linear perspective, and the realism possible through the use of oil painting technique. In time, artists like Courbet and Cezanne (and many who followed them) began in various ways to challenge the basic idea of what it is for an image to be true and real.

  • Modern Wing Highlights Exhibitions

    Modern Wing Highlights Exhibitions

    Among the department’s highlights are iconic works by members of the School of Paris, such as Balthus, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso. The department is also rich in works by the circle of early American modernists around Alfred Stieglitz, including Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and John Marin; large-scale paintings by Abstract Expressionists such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko; and modern design, from Josef Hoffmann and members of the Wiener Werkstätte to Art Nouveau jewelry by René Lalique. The collection developed thanks to extraordinary gifts and bequests of works of art as well as acquisition funds. In recent years these holdings have been augmented by acquisitions of major collections—including the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of twentieth-century masterworks and the Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection of postwar paintings—as well as purchases of renowned single paintings, such as Jasper Johns’s White Flag and Anselm Kiefer’s Bohemia Lies by the Sea.

    In 1987 the Museum opened the Lila Acheson Wallace Wing (galleries 900–925) dedicated to the display of modern and contemporary art. The fifth-, fourth-, and second-floor collection galleries offer a deeper experience of art through all mediums and by artists from more diverse geographies and backgrounds than ever before. A general chronological spine unites the three floors and serves as a touchstone of continuity for visitors. Individual galleries, some of which will be medium-specific, delve into presentations of art and ideas that only MoMA’s collection can offer.

    Recognizing that there is no single or complete history of modern and contemporary art, the Museum will systematically rotate and reinstall one-third of these collection galleries every six months.

  • The Artist’s Studio View Inside

    The Artist’s Studio View Inside

    The enormous Studio is without doubt Courbet’s most mysterious composition. However, he provides several clues to its interpretation: “It’s the whole world coming to me to be painted”, he declared, “on the right, all the shareholders, by that I mean friends, fellow workers, art lovers. 
    On the left is the other world of everyday life, the masses, wretchedness, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, people who make a living from death”.

    In the first group, those on the right, we can recognise the bearded profile of the art collector Alfred Bruyas, and behind him, facing us, the philosopher Proudhon. The critic Champfleury is seated on a stool, while Baudelaire is absorbed in a book. The couple in the foreground personify art lovers, and near the window, two lovers represent free love.
    On the side of “everyday life”, we find a priest, a merchant, a hunter who somewhat resembles Napoleon III, and even an unemployed worker and a beggar girl symbolising poverty. We can also see the guitar, the dagger and the hat, which, together with the male model, condemn traditional academic art.
    In this vast allegory, truly a manifesto painting, each figure has a different meaning. And in the middle of all this stands Courbet himself, flanked by benevolent figures: a female muse, naked like the Truth, a child and a cat. In the centre, the painter presents himself as a mediator.

    Courbet thus affirms the artist’s role in society in an enormous scene on the scale of a history painting. When faced with the rejection of his painting, intended for the 1855 Universal Exhibition, Courbet built a “Pavilion of Realism” at his own expense. Here, outside the official event, he organised his own exhibition, which also includedA Burial at Ornans, so that his work could be available to the whole of society.

  • Conversation: Ed Ruscha Great Artist

    Join us for this year’s annual Woman’s Board lecture and hear from acclaimed artist Ed Ruscha, as he speaks about his prolific career and practice that spans drawing, painting, photography, film, printmaking, and publishing. 

    JEFFREY BROWN: This attraction of yours to the road, to what’s along the roadside — it began in your youth, I guess? Tell me, where did it come from?

    ED RUSCHA: I traveled around a bit with my family on driving trips of the western U.S., and maybe that — these long drives, mostly on US 66 and other roads, too — maybe inspired me to see the country. And some of them were long, even boring journeys that opened me to– I don’t know, new vistas or something that I didn’t have while I was growing up in Oklahoma City.

    JEFFREY BROWN: And how did it become a theme of your art? Was it an overt thing that you decided to pursue as a kind of content for you as an artist or just developed naturally? How did that happen?

    ED RUSCHA: Well I never sat down, planned anything out. There was no strategy, no agenda or anything. They seemed to be individual attractions I had for things like gasoline stations and, oh, like telephone poles and almost things that are overlooked or forgotten. And these things impress me in their own simple ways, I guess. The architecture of America, and especially the west, had an effect, and I began to focus, sort of piece by piece, of these individual things in my art, and somehow they began to add up.

    JEFFREY BROWN: What did they add up to?

    ED RUSCHA: Well, they added up to really nothing more than what this whole venture is, which is an unfinished journey. You know, it’s like I’m trying to follow perspective and maybe I’m searching for the vanishing point — that I hope I never reach!

    JEFFREY BROWN: I’m looking at the catalog now, so I have it open to one of the very iconic paintings of yours, the Standard Oil Station in Amarillo Texas, 1963. So just to use that as an example: describe it for me.

    ED RUSCHA: It’s like a box with words on it. And that, to me, is what most of this architecture that attracted me. On the highway and in these little towns, I would see boxes with words on them, and it began to creep into my aesthetic. And also there are, like, other elements to it that I was always impressed with. Those old movies that had passenger trains, where they would start in on one little tiny point in the very right hand corner of the screen and they would zoom into place to the upper left hand corner, and the passenger train seemed to– it was a like a bridge picture that would show the characters in the movie, you know, traveling. And that zoom factor, to me, had a place in making a picture. And I guess I was putting two and two together, that maybe it’s that element of a passenger train zooming into focus. And I began to see these gas stations as maybe doing the same thing.

  • New on Art View New Exhibition

    New on Art View New Exhibition

    The museum continually acquires new works by gift or by purchase that expand the stories that we tell in our galleries.

    For Ego Painting, Faith Ringgold borrowed a compositional format from Kuba textile designs of the Democratic Republic of Congo to create a multiplicity of word associations. Part of her Black Light series, through which the artist addressed blackness as both a color and a precarious social identify, Ego Painting features equally dark colors placed directly adjacent to one another, emphasizing their contrast and idiosyncrasy. It is one of the first works by Ringgold to incorporate text in its composition and is the first painting by the artist to enter the museum’s holdings.

    Intimately scaled crosses, such as this newly acquired work, were extremely popular devotional objects in 17th-century Spain. This example is exceptional as it is dated and signed by a female artist, María Josefa Sánchez. Very little is known about Sánchez; she was active 1639–49, probably in Castile, and the only works currently attributed to her are four other crucifixes.

    The works that Dutch painter Gerrit van Honthorst created during and after his studies in Rome often feature candlelight or torchlight in night scenes, presenting a gentler, more meditative variation on the dramatic light effects employed by his Italian peers. This painting expands the range and complexity of the Art Institute’s collection of Dutch paintings. Moreover, as a character or head study—called a tronie, in the parlance of the day—it complements our great Rembrandt, Old Man with a Gold Chain (1631).

  • Global Fine Art Awards History

    Global Fine Art Awards History

    The GFAA program honors innovation and excellence in exhibition design, historical context, educational value, and public appeal. This annual awards program recognizes the best curated fine art and design exhibited around the world- in museums, galleries, fairs, biennials and public installations.

    In addition to the research-based nominations, GFAA accepts open calls from museums, biennials, fairs, galleries and other art organizations. Individual patrons may nominate their favorite exhibitions as well.The Nominating Committee reviews the slate prepared by the Art Research Committee, and presents their findings and final approvals to the Judges.  The Judges modify and select the final slate of Nominees, then vote on the Finalists and Winners.

    In 2018, the fifth edition of the program juries 13 Awards, and announces a final slate of 94 Nominees- from 6 continents, 49 cities and 31 countries across the globe. Whereas many are from the top 100 art museums visited in the world (April 2017, The Art Newspaper), the majority (55%) are from smaller institutions, independent projects, galleries, fairs and biennials.

    The culmination of the annual program took place on Tuesday, March 12, 2019 in celebration of all GFAA Nominees and the presentation of the Winners of the 2018 Global Fine Art Awards. The black-tie gala was held at the Harold Pratt Mansion on Park Avenue and 68th St in NYC, headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations.

    The digital age provides both opportunities and risks for museums and other art organizations to grow their audiences.  Digital representation of exhibitions, and artworks for sale through auction houses, galleries and online media companies, creates a completely global audience, and a unique curated experience.

    However, nothing will ever replace the feeling and sensory experience of seeing exhibitions live.

    Where else can we “see” and experience a virtual collection of the best exhibitions from around the world? As far as we are aware, nowhere else besides the GFAA program.

    There is so much to experience and share – and we believe that the GFAA program will help educate people around the world about art and its global messages.