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Works of the Week: February 24, 2012
Image
credits (left to right):
Peggy Bacon, The Copy Desk (The Washington Post),
1945, lithograph, 12 x 10 inches. Museum purchase with funds provided by Lynn
Williams and 2011. Collectors’ Circle members Ladene and Russell Newton; Peggy Bacon, Model in Bellows’ Class (The Art
Students League, NYC), 1918, drypoint, 6 x 8 inches. Museum purchase with funds
provided by 2011 Collectors’ Circle member Frances Myers.
Adding
to the Museum's growing collection of prints related to the Art Students League
of New York, which currently includes works by George Bellows and John Sloan,
two works by Peggy Bacon (1895 - 1987) were recently acquired by the Asheville
Art Museum's Collectors' Circle. Bacon is an artist known for her satirical
drawings and prints illustrating the everyday lives of people around her. She
became sought after for her illustrations and witty verse in magazines such as The
New Yorker, New Republic, Fortune and Vanity Fair.
Peggy Bacon was born
in Connecticut and raised as an only child by her parents, who were also
artists, after the death of her two infant brothers. Bacon began her formal art
training when she enrolled in the New York City School of Applied Arts for
Women in 1913 at the age of 18. From 1915 until 1920 she studied at the Art
Students League under John Sloan, George Bellows and other noteworthy artists.
Bacon's circle was
formed at the Art Students League and the League's summer school in Woodstock[1].
There, she met her husband, Alexander Brook, and they were married in 1920.
Though Bacon initially thought of herself as a painter, her reputation was
built upon her drawings and prints. Bacon helped to establish the American
Print Makers, an artists' organization which sought greater exhibition
opportunities for printmakers. Between 1918 and 1966 she illustrated over sixty
books, nineteen of which she also wrote.
Bacon often exhibited
her work, including prints, drawings, pastels and watercolors, in major solo
exhibitions in New York's museums and galleries. She was represented by Rehn
Galleries and later, Kraushaar Galleries[2].
In the 1930s and 1940s, Bacon taught at the Fieldstone School Art Students
League, Hunter College, Temple University, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington
D.C. and other regional colleges and schools in Philadelphia, New Jersey and
New York. She completed her last prints in 1955 and, as her eyesight failed,
returned to painting. Bacon painted dreamlike landscapes into her final years
of life using the aid of a magnifying glass.
Much like her mentors
George Bellows and John Sloan, and contemporaries Isabel Bishop, Thomas Hart
Benton, Reginald Marsh, Mabel Dwight and others, Peggy Bacon documented
everyday lives, often satirizing the people around her in their ordinary
habitats-at work, dances, museums, on street corners, etc. Bacon's work in
particular reflects her personal wit and interest in the commonplace, as seen
in The Copy Desk (The Washington Post) and Model
in Bellows' Class (The Art Students League).
The Asheville Art
Museum's Collections Growth Plan focuses in part upon the work of Bellows,
Benton, Marsh, Sloan and their artist followers, such as Peggy Bacon. These two
recent acquisitions represent important additions to the Museum's growing
holdings of works by such artists in the Permanent Collection.
During the
Asheville Art Museum's annual Collectors' Circle purchase party, held in
December of 2011, Circle member Frances Myers gifted Model in Bellows' Class (The Art Students League), 1918, drypoint,
6 x 8 inches. And Circle members Ladene and Russell Newton, along with Lynn
Williams, gifted the later work, The Copy
Desk (The Washington Post), 1945, lithograph, 12 x 10 inches.
Model in Bellows'
Glass, 1918, is one of Bacon's earliest works. Also
documenting the studio environment, this drypoint etching ties directly to a
print by George Bellows, Artists Judging Works of Art, also found in the
Museum's collection. Bacon's piece, an illustration found in her books The
True Philosopher and Other Cat Tales, offers the opportunity to
discuss recreation and play, and documents the interior of a 1918 room.
The Copy Desk, 1945, exemplifies
the other end of Bacon's printmaking spectrum. This lithograph depicts men in
the copy room of The Washington Post, documenting individuals at work in
ordinary circumstances and reminding the viewer of the newspaper's importance
at that particular point in time.
[1]
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/peggy-bacon-papers-5832/more
[2]
http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/peggy-bacon-papers-5832/more
Works of the Week: January 17, 2012
  Image
credits (from
left): Joel Queen, Carolina Parakeets,
2011, ceramic with turquoise, 7.5 x 8 x 8 inches Gift of Susan Holden,
Collectors' Circle Member. Joel Queen, Untitled Pot, 2011, ceramic, 6.5 x 8 x 8
inches. Gift of Gail and Brian McCarthy, Collectors' Circle Members.
Joel Queen is a ninth-generation potter of the Eastern Band of
Cherokee Indians. Having earned a Master of Fine Arts from Western Carolina
University, Queen produces five styles of pottery including black pottery,
which is the most traditional. "As a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee
Indians, I feel I have a responsibility to keep Cherokee art alive," he says.
"I live to teach others about my art and the Cherokee culture." [1]
Queen's work preserves the traditions of Cherokee pottery, while
incorporating more contemporary designs. His black pottery is hand-polished and
hand-fired in an open pit [2].
As seen in Carolina Parakeets, 2011,
this form is often incised with both traditional and modern designs, and is
decorated with turquoise and coral using tools also carved by hand. This
exquisite work was recently gifted to the Museum's Permanent Collection by Collectors'
Circle member, Susan Holden. A second work of this style, Untitled pot, 2011, was gifted by Collectors' Circle members Gail
and Brian McCarthy.
In the spring of 2002, Queen was among a small group of Cherokee
potters instrumental in reviving the stamped pottery style. Stamped pottery is
hand-coiled, burnished and fired in an open pit, and is the oldest of the
Cherokee pottery traditions, dating back thousands of years.[3]
Queen's pottery will be featured in the upcoming exhibition Ancient
Forms, Modern Minds: Contemporary Cherokee Ceramics, on view at the
Museum from March 17 - August 12, 2012.
[1]
Quote accessed in December 2011 from Web site: http://www.blueridgeheritage.com/traditional-artist-directory/joel-queen
[2]
Information accessed in December 2011 from Web site: http://www.blueridgeheritage.com/traditional-artist-directory/joel-queen
[3]
Information accessed in December 2011 from Web site: http://www.blueridgeheritage.com/traditional-artist-directory/joel-queen
Work of the Week: January 10, 2012
Image credit: David Levinthal (1949- ), Untitled from the series
Barbie (#77), 1998, polaroid Polacolor ER Land Film, 20 x 24 inches. Edition
1/5. Collectors' Circle purchase, 2011.
Born in San
Francisco, CA in 1949, David Levinthal is a leading contemporary photographer
who has produced a diverse body of work, primarily utilizing large-format
Polaroid photography. Perhaps best known for his Barbie portraits, Levinthal
uses small toys and props with dramatic lighting to construct mini environments
of subject matter, often touching upon various aspects of American culture,
from racial and political references to American pop culture and beyond.
Levinthal
comments, "Ever since I began working with toys, I have been intrigued with the
idea that these seemingly benign objects could take on such incredible power
and personality simply by the way they were photographed. I began to realize
that by carefully selecting the depth of field and making it narrow, I could
create a sense of movement and reality that was in fact not there."
Levinthal
earned a BA in Studio Art from Stanford University (1970), an MFA in
Photography from Yale University (1973) and a Master of Science in Management
Science from the MIT Sloan School of Management (1981). He was the recipient of
a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1995 and a National Endowment
for the Arts Fellowship in 1990/91.
Levinthal is included in many public collections, including
those of notable fine art institutions both domestically and abroad, such as
the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in
Washington, DC, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, France, among others. His
work has been featured in recent solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and
Portland, OR. In 2002, Levinthal was also featured in a solo exhibition at the
Asheville Art Museum titled David Levinthal: Disquieting Tales
from Toyland.
The
2011 Collectors' Circle members voted to acquire Untitled from the series Barbie (#77), 1998 for the Museum's
Permanent Collection. This work complements
and expands the Museum's growing collection of contemporary American
photography by noteworthy American artists including Lee Friedlander, John
Pfahl and William Wegman.
Work of the Week: January 6, 2012
 Sue
Fuller (1941 - 2006), Catch Me a Planet,
1952, 10 x 14 inches, intaglio print. Collectors' Circle Purchase, 2011.
Artist Sue Fuller was born in Pittsburgh, PA
in 1914. She attended the Carnegie Institute and Columbia University. In the
summer of 1934, she studied with Hans Hofmann, a German-born American artist
and pioneer of the Abstract Expressionist movement. During the early 1940s
Fuller worked with the printmaker Stanley William Hayter at his studio, Atelier
17, which was moved from Paris to New York City following the outbreak of World
War II. There, Fuller became a master printer and developed intaglio techniques
of her own.
Fuller was a prolific painter, printmaker,
sculptor and teacher. She was a member of the Society of American Etchers,
Society of American Graphic Artists and Artists Equity Association, and taught at
the University of Minnesota, the Stourbridge School of Arts and Crafts,
University of Georgia, Columbia University Teachers College, Pratt Institute
and the Museum of Modern Art.
Her work has been included in numerous solo
and group exhibitions and is represented in the collections of the New York
Public Library, Chicago Art Institute, Tate Gallery, Library of Congress, Fogg
Museum of Harvard University, Museum of Modern Art, Carnegie Institute, Whitney
Museum, Metropolitan Museum, National Academy of Design and other notable
institutions.
Thanks to the generosity of the Museum's
Collectors' Circle and other individuals, the Museum has amassed a solid
collection of mid-century works of American art. Acquired for the Museum by the
Circle in late 2011, Catch Me a Planet
is a rich and complex intaglio, and a significant contribution and compliment
to the Museum's collection of fine art prints and growing holdings of mid-century
art.
Work of the Week: December 15, 2011
Pierre Daura
(1896-1976), Funeral, ca. 1941-45,
oil painting, 32 x 25.25 inches. Gift of Martha R. Daura. Asheville Art Museum
Collection. 1998.17.35.21
Spanish-born artist Pierre Daura (1896-1976) was raised
in Barcelona where he studied at the School of Fine Arts, known as "La Llotja",
under José
Ruiz Blasco, the father of renowned artist Pablo Picasso. Daura sold his first
painting at the age of fourteen. In 1914, at the age of eighteen, he traveled
to Paris where he began to seriously pursue a career in art and exhibited his
work in numerous galleries and exhibitions, including the Salon D'Automne in
1922.
While painting a mural in Normandy in 1923, Daura
sustained an injury to his left hand, which was rendered permanently useless
due to nerve damage caused by a scaffolding accident. In 1927, Daura met an
American art student, Louise Heron Blair of Richmond, Virginia. The couple
married in 1928 and moved to the small, art-centric town of Saint-Cirq Lapopie in
Southwestern France.
In the wake of WWII, Daura and his wife decided to
establish permanent residency in Virginia while visiting Louise's family in
1939. Daura was officially granted U.S. citizenship in 1943. During his time in
Virginia, the artist was named the Art Department Chair of Lynchburg College in
1945. He also taught art at Randolph-Macon Women's College from 1946-53, after
which he returned to painting and sculpting fulltime.
Daura worked in several media including oils, watercolor,
engraving, drawing and sculpture, often manipulating the techniques to examine
himself and the world around him. Daura's
reflective character is evident in his anaylitic self portraits and his
exuberant landscapes. His study of other
artists and experimentation with the influences he encountered throughout his
career are evident in his prolific body of work, which includes a diverse range
of media and subject matter. Daura skillfully developed his own unique style,
assimilating early influences of Medieval and Renaissance art, the art of El Greco
and Cezanne, and the art of the avant-garde, which he had encountered in Paris.
Daura's Funeral,
completed soon after the artist settled in Virginia, combines both landscape
and portraiture in its depiction of mourners gathered around a gravesite as a
casket is covered and enters its final resting place. On view in The Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire | Water, Daura's oil
painting exemplifies man's final view of the earth. Funeral was given to the Museum in 1999 by the artist's daughter,
Martha R. Daura.
Work of the Week: November 21, 2011
 Jack Tworkov (1900- 1982), KTL #1, 1982, lithograph, 24 x 24 inches. Gift of Brian E. Butler. Asheville Art Museum Collection. 2005.11.10.61
Polish-born artist Jack Tworkov made his mark as a leading
Abstract Expressionist painter in the first half of the 20th century,
though he later explored other styles. Born in 1900, Tworkov studied English at
Columbia University and briefly contemplated
becoming a poet before turning his attention to art. He studied at the National
Academy of Design from 1923 to 1925 and later, at the Art Students League from
1925 to 1926.
Tworkov was employed by the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
between 1935 and 1941 as one of many artists commissioned under the Federal Art
Project. During this time, he made connections with many artists who later
pioneered the Abstract Expressionist movement. Tworkov was a founding member of
a group called ‘The Club', which from 1949 until the late 1950s was the primary
avant-garde forum for art in New York City. Notable members included artists
Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Philip Guston, among others.
Tworkov's earlier work is marked by a sensual and lyrical
sense of line and abstract figuration. He later began using a grid to create
more structured compositions. He used layers of gouache, a water-based paint, both
as an additive and subtractive element, often scraping and erasing to create
textured drawings and paintings. In the mid-1960s, Tworkov turned to a
geometric style aligned more closely with minimalism. KTL #1 reflects this shift to a more rigid, geometric framework
with color overlay.
Throughout his career, Tworkov taught at a number of
prestigious schools such as Black Mountain College (1952), the Pratt Institute,
and Yale University, where he was Chairman of the Art Department from 1963 to
1969. He was awarded the Corcoran Gold Medal at the 28th Biennial
Exhibit of American Painting in 1963. The next year his work was presented in
solo exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San
Francisco Museum of Art. In 1982, just prior to the artist's death, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum organized a major retrospective exhibition of his work entitled Jack Tworkov: Fifteen Years of Painting.
Tworkov's KTL #1 was
given to the Museum by Brian E. Butler in 2005. The painting is currently on
view in the exhibition Homage2, which pays
tribute to artist Josef Albers's mid-century series Homage to the Square, and incorporates works by artists who have
used color and geometric space to explore the limitations and possibilities of
the square format.
October 20, 2011
Maud
Gatewood (1934-2004), Lake Road, 1959,
oil on canvas, 40.13 x 39.13 inches. Bequest of the Artist. Asheville Art
Museum Collection. 2007.02.01.21.
Born in Yanceyville, NC in 1934, Maud Gatewood
received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1954 from the Women's College of
North Carolina, now the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She later
earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Ohio State University and was
awarded a Fulbright grant for graduate study in Vienna, Austria from1962 - 1963
under renowned painter Oskar Kokoschka[1].
Gatewood taught at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, AL, Texas Christian
University in Fort Worth, TX, and was a member of the Art Department faculty at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte during the program's infancy in
the early 1970s[2].
Much of Gatewood's work walks a thin line between
abstraction and representation, and ranges from figurative work to landscapes.
Early works by the artist, such as Lake
Road, demonstrate the artist's keen understanding of Abstract Expressionism
and her thorough grounding in an art form that invites self-expression through
spontaneity, loose brushwork and composition. This work was given to the Museum
as a bequest of the artist.
Lake
Road
can be seen in the current exhibition Color
Study, on view in the Appleby Foundation Gallery through Sunday, November
6, 2011.
[1]
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ncccha/biographies/maudegatewood.html
[2]
http://libapps.uncc.edu/manuscripts/ms_display.php?ms=393.php
October 14, 2011
Ewart M. Ball, Sr.
(1894-1937), Leveling of Cox Street for
New Battery Park Hotel, negative 1921, positive 2000. Black and white
silver gelatin print, 10.25 x 12.86 inches. Museum Purchase with funds provided
by the Asheville Citizen-Times. Asheville Art Museum Collection. SC2000.01.101.91
Ewart M. Ball, Sr. was born in Madison County, NC in 1894 where
he spent his early life growing up on a farm.
In 1911 he joined the U.S. Army, for which he served along the Mexican
border until about 1919, at which point he began practicing photography, moving
in rapid succession from the cities of Charleston, Florence and Georgetown, SC[i]. It was during this period that Ball began
producing postcard portraits. The
opportunity to purchase the Plateau Studio, then located at Pack Square,
brought him back to Western North Carolina and the city of Asheville[ii]. Though his studio was operated as a full-time
commercial and portrait business, Ball also became a photographer for the
Asheville Citizen-Times for which he captured images of daily life and major
events in the region.
In 1921, Ball sat upon a hillside overlooking the city of
Asheville where Battery Park Hotel once stood. Built in 1886, the grand hotel was
one of Asheville's most renowned venues during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. Shortly after opening the
Grove Park Inn in 1913, Edwin Grove purchased the Battery Park Hotel and then
tore it down, excavating and leveling the massive hill on which it stood before
erecting a second Battery Park Hotel in 1924.
Ball's documentary photograph captured the enormous feat of leveling 25
acres of hillside with only mule and muscle.
Ewart Ball Sr.'s photograph reflects on man's ability to
physically alter the earth and can be seen in the current exhibition The
Elemental Arts: Air | Earth |
Fire | Water .
The Museum's Photography Collection,
which contains both documentary and art photography, is a significant resource
for the Museum and is utilized in many exhibitions.
[i]
http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/photo/ball/ball.htm
[ii]
http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/photo/ball/ball.htm
October 7, 2011
 Paula Stark (1956- ), Red Earth, 1996, oil painting, 14 x 30 inches. Gift of the Artist. Asheville Art Museum
Collection. 1997.11.01.21
In Red Earth, artist Paula Stark at once suggests a sense of timelessness and serenity, while capturing an impression of moodiness that distances the viewer from the scene. Known for her landscape paintings, at first glance many of Stark’s works appear purely representational. Upon further examination, one notices the perfect balance of the piece and the absence of people in the scene. Rather than depicting an event or action within the scene, Stark uses her landscapes to evoke emotion and to establish atmosphere. Stark has said of her work, “Landscape painting to me, is a conversation with nature…I approach each landscape with specific ideas both conscious and unconscious.”
Paula Stark was born in Worcester, MA. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of New Hampshire in 1983 and her Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1988. Her art has been featured in solo exhibitions in New York City, NY, Williamsburg, VA, Greenwich, CT, Asheville, NC, and Montclair, NJ, to name a few, and many of her works are currently held in both private and public collections nationwide.
The Asheville Art Museum seeks to engage and inspire individuals and enrich community through dynamic experiences in American Art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Paintings, whether representational or abstract, are primary to the Museum’s collecting goals. Therefore, works such as Red Earth strengthen the Museum’s contemporary holdings. Red Earth is currently on view in The Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire | Water, which uses both two- and three-dimensional works from the Museum’s Permanent Collection to examine the ways in which artists have treated or incorporated the four elements into their creations.
September 23, 2011
 Randy Shull (1962- ),
Threshold/Arbor, 1996, painted wood sculpture,
95 x 90 x 6 inches. Gift of Hedy Fischer. Asheville Art Museum Collection. 1999.26.38
By definition [1],
a threshold signifies the place or
point of entering or beginning; an arbor
is typically thought of as a shelter of vines, of branches or
of latticework covered with climbing shrubs. Randy Shull's Threshold/Arbor contemplates
what lies above the surface of the earth in the current exhibition, The
Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire | Water . The sculpture at once reflects the things that
organically flow from the earth and, conversely, to things made by man or
imposed upon the earth. Threshold/Arbor
invites viewers to seemingly step into the work itself and is an
effective and compelling example of the artist's creativity.
Within the
Permanent Collection of more than 3,000 works of 20th and 21st century American
art, the Museum places particular emphasis on fine handmade objects representing
the rich cultural heritage of Western North Carolina and the American
Southeast. As such, Shull's Threshold/Arbor,
which was donated to the Museum by Hedy Fischer in 1999, is an important
contribution to the Museum's current holdings of craft and sculpture by regional
artists.
Known for his rich use of color and space [2], Shull's sculptural works of art often celebrate and blur
the boundaries between art, craft, architecture and design. As one critic
described [3],
"[His] art exists in a variety of art worlds: contemporary abstract painting,
assemblage sculptures and the revival of handmade furniture."
Shull is an award-winning North Carolina artist who, over
the course of his career, has worked in a number of mediums including
architecture, furniture design, landscape design and painting. He currently divides
his time living and working in both Asheville, NC and Merida, Mexico. A native
of Illinois, Shull received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1986 from the
Rochester Institute of Technology. From 1987 to 1991 he completed an artist
residency at Penland School of Craft in Penland, NC, where he also worked as an
instructor.
Among his many accolades, Shull was awarded a North Carolina
Arts Council Fellowship in 1994 and a National Endowment for the Arts Southern
Arts Federation grant in 1993. The artist has shown his work in numerous solo
exhibitions across the country, most recently in the Ogden Museum of Southern
Art, the Bellevue Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design.
His work is held in collections both nationally and abroad, including those of the
Asheville Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum, the Mint Museum of
Craft and Design, and the Museum of Art and Design in New York, as well as
private collections in Australia, Columbia, Japan,
Germany, the U.S. and Venezuela.
[1] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
[2] http://www.randyshull.com/bio.html
[3] http://www.hodgestaylor.com/gallery/index.php/artists/cv/cv-randy-shull
September 14, 2011
Beth Van Hoesen (1926- 2010), Pat, nd, color intaglio print, 11.75 x
9.25 inches. Gift of R.K. Benites. Asheville Art Museum Collection. 2009.01.05.60
Beth
Van Hoesen was born in 1926 in Boise, Idaho and spent her childhood in
California. In 1944, Van Hoesen enrolled at Stanford University, where she
studied under prominent artist and muralist Victor Arnautoff. She also studied
painting both at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura de la Escuela Esmeralda in
Mexico City from 1945 - 46, and at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in
San Francisco from 1946 - 47. After earning her Bachelor of Arts degree from
Stanford University in 1948, Van Hoesen returned to the CSFA in 1951 where she
studied with Clyfford Still, an American artist and painter regarded as one of
the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism.
In
1953, Van Hoesen married fello
w artist Mark Adams. The couple settled in San
Francisco, where they renovated a 1910 firehouse and established their
respective studios. By the late 1950s, Van Hoesen began to receive praise for
her drawings and intaglio prints, including a solo exhibition at Stanford Art
Gallery in 1957. Though she was a gifted
draftswoman, Van Hoesen was particularly interested in intaglio printmaking. Intaglio is an Italian word which means to cut below the surface, which is
precisely what the artist must do when creating intaglio prints. Van Hoesen
transferred line drawings to a copper plate covered with an acid resistant
black wax. The copper plate was then dipped into an acid bath, exposing the
copper to chemicals. Once removed, the plate was cleaned and then covered with
ink and sent through the press.
Van
Hoesen is most often recognized for her portraits as well as her images of
animals. In the preface to a 2009 exhibition of Van Hoesen's prints, Joseph
Goldyne, a prominent artist, writer and collector, wrote "For her, the appeal
of a subject owed largely to its adaptability to intaglio-how it would comport
with her love of capturing the essence of form in line and tone". Van Hoesen's
portrait, Pat, reflects this
straightforward approach and is elegant in its simplicity.
Throughout
her career, Beth Van Hoesen distinguished herself as a major figure in 20th
century printmaking. Her work has been exhibited in noteworthy museums across
the country, such as the Chicago Art Institute in Chicago, IL, the Museum of
Modern Art in NYC, and the Smithsonian Institution in D.C., along with many
others. She was widely honored for her artistic achievements, including a 1981
Award of Honor in Graphics from the San Francisco Arts Commission and a 1993
Distinguished Artist Award from the California Society of Printmakers.
Beth Van
Hoesen's color intaglio print, Pat, positioned
next to Robert Cottingham's Hot in the
current exhibition The Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire |
Water, calls attention to the subject's fiery
hair. This work was donated to the Museum by R.K. Benites in 2009.
September 9, 2011
 Oscar Louis Bachelder
(1852-1935)
Pitcher, ca. 1920
Stoneware, 7.5 x 6 x 5.75 inches
2007 Art Nouveaux Purchase
Asheville Art Museum Collection
2007.18.01.83
In 1852, Oscar Louis Bachelder was born in Wisconsin to a
family of potters. Bachelder and his family moved several times throughout his
childhood. At each site, he received training in his father's workshops in
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois and ultimately, Nebraska. As a young man,
Bachelder began what turned into a 40-year career as an itinerant, utilitarian
potter, working in both the United States and Canada.
Attracted by the local clay and the beauty of Western North
Carolina, Bachelder settled nearby Asheville in the year 1911. At first he
found work in a local pottery studio. Four years later, at the age of 63, he
realized his life-long dream; with the help of a friend, Bachelder purchased
four acres of land just southwest of Asheville and opened a pottery shop,
eventually naming it Omar Khayyam Pottery.
Following the utilitarian pottery style that was so familiar to him, Bachelder focused
on producing functional wares for the first few years that his shop was open.
In the 1920s, Bachelder became one of only two potters in
Western North Carolina to intentionally produce "art" pottery. His resulting
work inspired a number of highly-regarded, American potters including Walter B.
Stephen of Pisgah Forest Pottery and
Paul Saint-Gaudens, the son of celebrated American sculptor Augustus
Saint-Gaudens. Bachelder was both a member of the Boston Society of Arts and
Crafts and the Philadelphia Arts and Crafts Guild. Groups such as these sprang
up in many cities across the United States in the 19th century to promote and
support the principles of traditional craftsmanship and handmade decorative
arts.
The pitcher, shown above, dates from about 1920. Bachelder
was noted for his mastery of form and his use of strong, deep glazes. This
pitcher links his utilitarian training with the advent of his interest in art
pottery. It is glazed with an Albany slip used by many utilitarian potters.
While the form is functional, the rounded curves and undulating lip reflect his
interest in more artful styles.
Bachelder's pottery,
often marked with an OLB cipher, is currently
held in collections across the country, such as the Asheville Art Museum, the
Newark Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Mint Museum. Bachelder's pitcher was purchased by the Asheville
Art Museum's Art Nouveaux Members in
2007, a group formed to support the development and stewardship of the Museum's
Permanent Collection through annual purchases of works of art.
The Asheville Art Museum's fundamental
collection focus is American art of the 20th and 21st centuries, with
particular emphasis on works significant to the Southeast, including fine,
handmade objects created in Western North Carolina. Pieces such as Oscar Bachelder's pitcher form
a strong basis for the Museum's Craft Collection. This work is currently on view in The
Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire | Water, a choice ware representing the earth's bounty.
August 29, 2011
 Therman Statom (1953- )
Cabalo Valador Series
#28, 2010
Screen printed and assembled glass.
14.38 x 16.38 x 4.63 inches.
Gift of Delphia Allen Lamberson and
Hoke Smith Holt, 2010.23.04.50f.
Therman Statom
was born in Winter Haven, FL in 1953 and was raised in Washington, DC. As a
young man Statom developed a friendship with Cady Noland, son of the
Asheville-born abstract painter, Kenneth Noland. Statom's decision to become an
artist was reportedly attributed to his acquaintance with the Noland family.
Following
his early studies in glass art at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, WA in
the early 1970s, the budding artist earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture
from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 1974, and a Master of Fine
Arts in Sculpture from Pratt Institute's School of Art and Design in 1978.
While
studying at the Pratt Institute, Statom made his first works using sheet glass
because the school was not equipped for hot glass working. Statom later directed
a short-lived glass program at the University of California, Los Angeles from
1983 until the program came to a close in 1985.
Perhaps
because of this early exposure to the medium, Statom continues to primarily
create works using sheet glass. The artist uses various techniques to create
his work, usually cutting, painting, and assembling the glass, and
incorporating found-glass objects to create three-dimensional sculptures. Many
of these works are quite large in scale. Statom is known for his site-specific
installations in which glass structures dwarf the viewer.
Statom's
art can be found in art institutions around the world, including the California
African-American Museum in Los Angeles, the Cincinnati Art Museum, the Detroit
Institute of Arts, the High Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American
Art Museum and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, among other notable
venues. Cabalo Valador Series #28 was
given to the Museum as a gift from Delphia Allen Lamberson and Hoke Smith Holt
in 2010.
Therman
Statom's works of glass art represent an important addition the Museum's
Permanent Collection for several reasons. Statom's experience both as a Studio Glass
artist and as a former instructor at the Penland School of Crafts make his work
an important contribution to the Museum's continued collecting focus on art of
significance to the cultural heritage of Western North Carolina.
Finally, Cabalo Valador Series #28 is one work in
a series created by the artist in conjunction with Flying Horse Editions, the
University of Central Florida's fine art research facility and the non-profit
publisher of many limited-edition prints, artist books and art objects by internationally
renowned artists. The Museum currently houses some two dozen prints that were created
at the Florida-based publisher. Prints and art objects such as these allow the
Museum to explore in greater depth the ways in which fine print studios work
with artists in a collaborative process.
Cabalo Valador Series #28 can be seen
in The
Elemental Arts: Air | Earth | Fire | Water, on view in the second floor galleries of the Asheville
Art Museum in September 2011 (ongoing).
August 17, 2011
 David Appleman (1943 - )
Summer
Sunrise, circa
1973.
Acrylic
painting on canvas,
38
x 47 inches.
Gift
of Jerald L. Melberg.
Asheville
Art Museum Collection.
1983.12.24.
Born in Mansfield, Ohio in 1943, David Appleman is an
accomplished sculptor, painter and printmaker. Appleman's Summer Sunrise (ca. 1973) is featured in the current exhibition Color
Study, on view in the Appleby Foundation Gallery through Sunday,
November 6, 2011.
Much of Appleman's work, including Summer Sunrise, falls into the tradition
of Abstraction. In Summer Sunrise Appleman
uses form, color and line to clearly reference blossoming flowers in the
morning sun. In contrast, Ellsworth Kelly's non-objective Orange with Green (1964 - 1965), also on view in Color
Study, offers no discernable content or imagery.
As a Southern artist, Appleman's pursuit of
abstraction during the latter part of the 20th century made him rare amongst abstract
artists of the time who mostly came from regions outside of the South. Thus,
his art is an important addition to the Museum's growing Permanent Collection
of 20th and 21st century American art of regional significance. Summer Sunrise was given to the Asheville
Art Museum by Jerald L. Melberg in 1983.
Appleman has received regional and national acclaim
for his art, including awards from Pembrooke College in North Carolina and the
Massilon Museum Purchase Award, among many other honors.
July 20, 2011
 Yvonne
Pene du Bois (1913 – 1997)
New Orleans Street,
circa 1946.
Oil Painting, 14.63 x 23 inches.
Gift of Elizabeth Roebling.
Asheville Art Museum Collection. 2003.22.03.21.
Born
in New York in 1913 to a family of artists, including acclaimed American
painter Guy Pene du Bois, Yvonne Pene du Bois was destined to become a great
artist. In 1924, du Bois and her family
moved to Garne par Dampierre, France where she attended the Lycee de Jeune
Filles in Versailles from 1924 to 1928. Following
her time in France, du Bois moved back to New York and attended the Art Students
League in the 1930s.
Best known for her cityscapes and portraits, du Bois
exhibited her work in respected galleries across the country, including the Art
Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery, the Pennsylvania Academy of the
Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design in New York. Presently the
artist’s oil painting, New Orleans Street,
can be seen on view in the Museum’s exhibition of works from the Permanent
Collection titled Looking Back: Celebrating 60 Years of Collecting at the Asheville Art
Museum.
New
Orleans Street is included in “Alone/Together”, one of
four themes depicted in the exhibition that were each curated by a different
member of the Museum’s curatorial staff. In “Alone/Together”, curated by Lynne
Poirier-Wilson, New Orleans Street is
displayed alongside a group of works eliciting viewers’ interpretations of what
constitutes the terms alone, solitary, lonely, together, close or social.
According to the curator,
“The empty and isolated
cityscape of New Orleans Street by
Yvonne Pene du Bois involves only the viewer and leaves the impression of
aloneness.”
Throughout her career, Du
Bois most often worked with oil paints on canvas. The technique of oil painting became a
preferred medium by many artists beginning in the seventeenth century. Oil
paints are made from natural or synthetic materials that have been mixed with
or ground into various vegetable oils, and may be layered onto the surface of a
canvas using a technique called impasto.
New
Orleans Street can
be seen in the Museum’s current exhibition Looking
Back: Celebrating 60 Years of Collecting at the Asheville Art Museum. This
exhibition will remain on view in the Museum’s Second Floor Galleries through
August 2011. New Orleans Street was a gift to the Asheville Art Museum from
Elizabeth Roebling and is part of the Museum’s Permanent Collection.
July 14, 2011
Aaron Yakim (1949 - )
White Oak Coal Basket, circa 1999
White oak splits with
no dye,
9 x 18.5 x 15.5
Donated by Billie
Ruth Sudduth.
Asheville Art Museum
Collection.
2006.07.02.85.
Appalachian basket maker Aaron Yakim was born in 1949 in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Today, Yakim works as an artist both independently
and collaboratively with fellow basket maker Cynthia Taylor. Yakim and Taylor craft
their baskets by hand-splitting white oak trees using
hand tools. Their devotion to this
recognizable form of craft carries on an important tradition of basket making
among artists of the central and southern Appalachian mountain region.
Most Appalachian
baskets are classified by their construction. In the Southern Appalachians,
basket makers have traditionally crafted three types of baskets—rib baskets,
rod baskets and split baskets. Today,
both rib and split baskets are among the most commonly produced forms in the
region. Aaron Yakim’s White Oak
Coal Basket is an excellent example of a split basket. In split baskets, the splits are made from thin
flat segments, woven through a framework of thick, round or rectangular ribs.
This type of construction creates a very durable basket. Reflecting
on his feelings towards the artistry of basket making, Yakim states,
“Tree,
knife, and time . . . the basic simplicity of materials and process appeals to
my sense of efficiency. Add the deep roots of tradition, and I have a complete
food.”
Over the span of his career as an artist and basket maker, Yakim’s work
has received many accolades and has been featured in exhibitions across the
U.S. and region.
Both Aaron Yakim and Cynthia Taylor were recognized as Master
Traditional Artists at the 1996 National Folk Festival in Dayton, Ohio. Both artists are also members of the Southern
Highland Craft Guild, originally known as the Southern Mountain Handicraft
Guild. The Southern Highland Craft Guild was founded in 1930 to promote high standards in crafts and to market the
works of its members. Today, the Guild
has over 700 members, including Aaron Yakim and other contemporary Appalachian
basket makers featured in the Museum’s upcoming exhibition, A Tisket A Tasket: Appalachian, Cherokee
and Low Country Baskets.
Aaron Yakim’s White Oak Cole Basket is featured in
the exhibition, A Tisket A Tasket:
Appalachian, Cherokee and Low County Baskets, on view in the Museum’s
Holden Community Gallery from Friday, July 15 through Sunday, January 8, 2012. Yakim’s White
Oak Cole Basket was a gift to the Museum from Billie Ruth Sudduth. This
work is part of the Asheville Art Museum’s Permanent Collection.
July 7, 2011
Tom Dimond (1944 - )
Shamus Tabriz, circa 1975.
Acrylic painting on canvas, 49 x 49
inches.
Museum Purchase with funds provided
by the N.E.A.
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
1976.14.24.
Born in 1944 in Massachusetts, artist Tom Dimond developed an interest in
painting early in life. According to the artist, at the young age of eight he
was first intrigued by a puzzle included in the comics section of a local
newspaper that involved reproducing a series of short lines to create a
recognizable image in the form of a grid. This early inspiration is evident in
Dimond's geometric art. Other influences include Tibetan tantric paintings,
Bostonian architecture and signage, and the sacred geometry, surface and colors
of the 15th century Florentine painter, Paolo Uccello. These
early influences can be seen in Shamus Tabriz (ca. 1975) on view in Color
Study, opening Saturday, July 9 in the Museum's Appleby Foundation Gallery.
After graduating from Massachusetts
College of Art in the early 1960s, Dimond continued his studies at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville where he earned his MFA in painting in
1969. Following graduate school, the artist worked as the art director for an
American humor magazine, National Lampoon from 1969 to 1970. Dimond also
served as the director of the Rudolph Lee Gallery at Clemson University from
1973 to 1988. Dimond's career in the arts has also included teaching positions
in various schools across the Southeast, including Winthrop College in Rock
Hill, South Carolina (1968 - 1969), Greenville County School District in
Greenville, South Carolina (1971 - 1973) and Clemson University in Clemson,
South Carolina from 1973 to present.
Dimond's work has been recognized in
two juried exhibitions in South Carolina and has been included in several solo
and group shows along the east coast. Dimond continues to exhibit his paintings
in galleries and juried shows across the South.
Shamus Tabriz is included in the upcoming exhibition, Color Study,
on view in the Museum's Appleby Foundation Gallery from Saturday, July 9
through Sunday, November 6, 2011. Shamus Tabriz was purchased with
funds provided by the N.E.A. and remains in the Asheville Art Museum's
Permanent Collection.
June 23, 2011
 Karen Karnes (1925 - )
Stoneware Batter Pitcher, circa
1953.
Ceramic, 4.75 x 9.5 x 6.63 inches.
Museum purchase with funds
provided by June and Vito Lenoci, Helga and Jack Beam and Pamela L. Myers in
memory of James Roy Moody.
Asheville
Art Museum Collection.
2004.05.01.82.
Born in 1925 in New York City,
ceramic artist Karen Karnes is the daughter of Jewish garment workers from
Russia and Poland. As a child, Karnes lived with her parents in an
experimental, left-wing community devoted to teaching extreme freedom—an area
known in New York City as Bronx Coops.
In 1939, Karnes attended the High
School for Music and Arts in New York, an alternative, public high school open
from 1936 to 1984. In 1942, Karnes began attending Brooklyn College. It was
during her studies at the college that the young artist first met architect
Serge Chermayeff. Chermayeff, who later taught Karnes, was known for his design
course inspired by the techniques of the Bauhaus, a world-renowned design
school once located in Berlin, Germany that was permanently shut down by the
Nazi Regime in 1933. With the encouragement of Chermayeff, Karnes also spent
the summer of 1947 studying design under Joseph Albers, a Bauhaus Master who
taught at Black Mountain College at the time.
Community has always played a
significant role in Karnes’s art. From the neighborhood of her childhood to her
years spent at Brooklyn College, Karnes allowed the sense of community she
experienced to play a role in the creation of her art. Following the summer of
1947, during which Karnes studied under Albers, the artist returned to Brooklyn
College where she then met David Weinrib, a ceramic artist and abstract
sculptor whom she later married. It was after the pair’s chance encounter and
their time spent together at Alfred University in the 1940s, that Karnes
discovered her passion for clay.
In 1952, Karnes and Weinrib were
offered a shared position at Black Mountain College to teach ceramics as
potters-in-residence. It was during her time spent at Black Mountain College
that Karnes created Stoneware Batter Pitcher (circa 1953). Serving as a
testament to the lasting legacy of Karnes and her fellow artists working at
Black Mountain College, whose aesthetic influence is still felt today
throughout the world, Stoneware Batter Pitcher is included in the Asheville Art
Museum’s current exhibition A Chosen Path: The Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes.
In 1954, Karnes moved to the Gate
Hill Cooperative, an idealistic experimental community located in Stony Point,
New York. While working at the cooperative, Karnes lived with several other
avant-garde, experimental American artists including John Cage and her
then-husband, David Weinrib. In 1967, Karnes taught a class at Penland School
of Crafts. Following her time at Penland, Karnes began heavily utilizing the
process of salt glazing in her pottery, which later gained her international
recognition.
Karnes has received much critical
acclaim for her work, including two Artist’s Fellowships from the National
Endowment for the Arts in 1976 and 1988, among many other awards. Over the
course of her career, she has created some of the most iconic pottery of the
late 20th and early 21st centuries. She remains one of the medium’s most
influential working potters and is a mentor to several generations of studio
potters. The Museum has an interest in ceramics with ties to Western North
Carolina. Karen Karnes is a major figure in post World War II ceramics and the
rise of the studio craft movement. Not only is she known for her own work, but
she is recognized for her role as an educator at Black Mountain College and
Penland School of Crafts where she inspired many younger ceramic artists.
Presently, Karnes continues to create new works of art at her home and studio
in Vermont. Stoneware Batter Pitcher is currently on view in A Chosen Path: The
Ceramic Art of Karen Karnes. This exhibition will remain on view at the Asheville
Art Museum in the Appleby Foundation Gallery until Sunday June 26, 2011.
June 15, 2011
Betty Waldo Parish (1910-1986)
St. Vedast, London, circa 1950.
Engraving on paper, 15.88 x 10.88
inches.
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
Gift of Elizabeth Roebling.
2003.22.02.62.
Betty Waldo Parish was born in 1910
to an American family in Cologne, Germany. Prior to World War I when Parish was
a child, she and her family moved to Evanston, Illinois. In the 1930s, Parish
studied at the Art Students League in New York alongside fellow student
Reginald Marsh and artist John Sloan, who taught at the League during the same
time period. The Art Students League was founded in 1875 by a group of artists,
many of whom had previously studied at the National Academy of Design in New
York during the post-Civil War era.
Parish was a painter and engraver
best known for her landscapes, cityscapes and detailed graphics of New York
City, Provincetown and the Adirondacks. Inspired by her fellow artists from the
Art Students League, Parish's work was part of the American Scene-Urban style.
The artists of this style were dedicated to expressing the loneliness of city
life, highlighting the plight of every man in the urban arena while lifting up
the underdog.
Parish's body of artwork includes
engravings like St. Vedast, London, pictured above. Engraving is a
technique that produces a print made from a metal surface that has been incised
with special tools called burins or gravers. The artist carves into the metal,
then inks the surface and produces a print. Engraving is the earliest intaglio printing process
which dates from the first half of the fifteenth century.
Parish was a member of the Society
of American Etchers, the National Association of Women Artists and the Pen and
Brush Club. Parish's works are included in collections around the country and
overseas, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of
Chicago, the Library of Congress, the British Museum, the Museum of the City of
New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Parish's body of artwork
has received numerous accolades including several Patron's Prizes, a research
award granted by the National Association of Women Artists, and a National Arts
Club Award for graphics.
Significant to the Museum's
collection, the work of Parish and her fellow printmakers who were supported by
the WPA's Federal Art Project gave rise to the acceptance of printmaking as a
form of creative media. Parish's work relates closely to the work of WPA
artists housed in the permanent collection, including pieces currently featured
in the Museum's exhibition Artists at Work: American Printmakers and the WPA,
on view through Sunday, September 25, 2011. Of further significance, the Museum
is fortunate to have a portrait of Betty Waldo Parish by Guy Pene du Bois
(1884-1958), making Parish one of the few artists in the collection of whom we
have a portrait as well as original work. Parish studied under the noted
portrait painter during her time in New York.
St. Vedast, London depicts a cityscape of a London street corner with a
steeple in the background. The streets are without person or vehicle. St.
Vedast is a church in London that was designed by Christopher Wren in 1670-73. St.
Vedast, London is currently on display as part of the exhibition An
Inside View in the Holden Community Gallery of the Asheville Art Museum
through Sunday, July 10, 2011. This piece was a gift to the Asheville Art
Museum from Elizabeth Roebling, daughter of the artist.
June 8, 2011
Lucille Lossiah (1957- ).
White Oak and Maple Market Basket
with Butternut Dye, 2008.
14 x 20.25 x 8.25 inches. 2008
Art Nouveaux Purchase.
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
2008.28.04.58.
Born in Cherokee, North Carolina in
1957, Lucille Lossiah carries on the Cherokee tradition of basket making that
has been passed down among her family for generations. The artist originally
learned basket making from her mother, Mary Jane Lossiah, and her grandmother,
Betty Long Lossiah. Her sister Ramona Lossiah is also a basket maker. According
to the artist, her mother always stressed the importance of preserving their
heritage through the tradition of basket making. Today, Lucille continues the
tradition, passing on the techniques of the craft to both her nieces and her
students at Cherokee High School.
In keeping with the tradition of the
Cherokee basket makers who preceded her, Lucille Lossiah works with maple,
white oak and river cane. Beginning in the 1940s, basket makers noticed that it
was becoming more difficult to harvest white oak for baskets as most of the
trees had been cut for timber to clear land for roads and other purposes. Betty
Lossiah (1903-2002), Lucille Lossiah’s grandmother, was among the first to
discover that the red maple tree could provide a suitable substitute for white
oak in crafting baskets. As a result, other basket makers began experimenting
with maple splits and soon discovered that dyes were glossier and more vibrant
in maple than in other basket making materials.
Over the past 120 years, the craft
of basket making has played an important role in carving out opportunities for
economic and professional growth. Basket making was a source of income for the
sisters and their family when they were growing up. As an active member of the
Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, Inc., the oldest Native American arts
cooperative in the nation, Lucille continues to travel around the country
demonstrating and selling her baskets alongside her sister, Ramona.
Over the years, Lucille has been
recognized for her craftsmanship, winning awards at the Cherokee Indian Fall
Festival and the Cherokee Art Market. The artist’s work has also been exhibited
at the Atlanta History Center. Lucille Lossiah was one of six Native American
artists recognized by the First Peoples Fund to receive the prestigious
Jennifer Easton Community Spirit Award fellowship. Annually the organization
selects American Indian artists who “manifest self-awareness and a sense of
responsibility to sustain the cultural fabric of a community.”
The Asheville Art Museum’s collection
focuses on American art of the 20th and 21st centuries. There are several areas
of special interest within this focus, including regional crafts and Cherokee
art. This summer the Museum will present an exhibition titled A Tisket A
Tasket: Appalachian, Cherokee and Low Country Baskets. This exhibition will
examine three world renowned basket making traditions located in our region,
namely, those of the Appalachian Mountains, the Cherokee, and of the Low
Country of the Carolinas. White Oak and Maple Basket with Butternut Dye (2008)
is one of the works that will be featured in this exhibition, which will be on
view in the Museum’s Holden Community Gallery July 15, 2011 through January 8,
2012.
May 25, 2011
Dox Thrash (1893-1965)
The Champ, circa 1938
Carborundum print, 7.88 x 5.25”
Asheville Art Museum Collection,
2006.22.01.63
Dox Thrash was born in Griffin,
Georgia. Like many other African Americans in the south, Thrash moved north
seeking work at the young age of 15. After three years working in the circus
and in Vaudeville, he arrived in Chicago. Thrash studied art first through a
correspondence school, then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from
1914 to 1917.
In World War I Thrash joined the Army and served in France in the 365th
Infantry Regiment, 183rd Brigade, 92nd Division, also known as the Buffalo
Soldiers. During his tour of duty, Thrash was injured by poison gas and
experienced shell shock. Following the end of World War I and his full
recovery, Thrash completed his art studies at the Graphic Sketch Club in
Philadelphia, where he studied from 1918 to 1923.
From 1934 to 1942, Thrash was a printmaker in the Pennsylvania Federal Arts
Project, one of several government-sponsored art programs funded by the Works
Progress Administration. Thrash is often credited as the inventor, and at times
the co-inventor, of the carborundum print process. Carborundum prints use a
carbon-based abrasive to burnish copper plates, allowing an artist to create an
image that can produce a print in tones ranging from pale gray to deep black.
Thrash used the carborundum method, similar to the more difficult and
complicated mezzotint process developed in the seventeenth century, as his
primary medium for much of his career. Many of his greatest works were created
utilizing the carborundum printmaking process.
An African American himself, Thrash spent the later years of his life
encouraging the artistry of young African Americans. Although Thrash received
little attention for his artwork during his lifetime, the Philadelphia Museum
of Art recognized the artist’s unique contributions to the field of
printmaking, opening an exhibition titled Dox Thrash: An African-American
Master Printmaker Rediscovered (http://www.philamuseum.org/exhibitions/2002/48.html),
almost 40 years after his death.
Thrash is best known for his realistic depictions of African American life in
the 20th century. The Champ depicts an African American boxer. The image
shows the fighter’s head and shoulders, his chin resting on one of his boxing
gloves. The artist’s careful attention to detail portrays a man who appears
introspective, seemingly reflecting on his new status as champion, or perhaps
recalling a time in the past when he was once known as The Champ.
May 5, 2011
Betty
Parsons (1900-1982).
Untitled, 1978.
Color lithograph. 29.63 x 21.13 inches.
Collection of the Asheville Art Museum.
Gift of Brian E. Butler. 2007.24.01.61.
Betty Parsons (1900-1982) was born
Betty Bierne Pierson. She grew up in New York City in an upper class family. At
age 13 Parsons attended the 1913 Armory Show, the exhibition that introduced
America to European avant-garde art. Many people found the work shocking, but
Parsons embraced the work because it showed a "new spirit." This
event instilled in Parsons a lifelong passion for modern art. In 1917, she even
turned down a position on the U.S. Olympic tennis team to pursue her interest
in art.
Parsons married wealthy socialite,
Schuyler Livingston Parsons in 1919. They divorced in 1922 when she moved to
Paris. From 1923 to 1933 Parsons studied sculpture in Paris and was very much a
part of the avant-garde art circle that included Gertrude Stein, Alexander
Calder, Man Ray and others. The stock market crash forced her to return to the
United States where she spent three years (1933-1936) teaching in Santa
Barbara, California. Afterwards, she returned to New York City.
Primarily remembered as an art
dealer, Parsons promoted the careers of numerous abstract artists of the 1940s.
She has been called the "den mother" of Abstract Expressionism.
Parsons learned the art gallery business through a series of brief
apprenticeships in various New York galleries. In 1946 she opened her own
gallery where she gave artists total freedom with their exhibitions. Because
she had many connections to upper class families in New York, she created
bridges between art collectors and artists. Parsons exhibited many emerging
artists including Barnett Newman, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Irene Rice
Pereira, Mark Rothko and Clyfford Still.
While Parsons never showed her own
work at the Betty Parsons Gallery, she remained committed to her artistry. She
began painting in the 1930s, later working in the Abstract Expressionist
manner.
In the 1970s, Parsons moved to Long
Island to a cliff-side studio built for her by sculptor Tony Smith, where she
took up sculpture. She developed a practice of salvaging scraps of what she
called "carpenter's throwaways," bits of wood and other materials
that would wash up on the beach near her home. She used these materials to make
her painted wood "constructions." Untitled (1978) was inspired
by her "constructions." The relationship can be seen by comparing it
to a sculpture in the collection of Parrish Art Museum.
Untitled (1978) is currently on view in Looking Back: Celebrating
60 Years of Collecting at the Asheville Art Museum.
April 13, 2011
Fielding Dawson (1930-2002).
Charles Olson, 1956.
Ink
drawing and collage on cardboard, 11.88 x 12.5 inches.
Collection of the Asheville Art Museum. Black Mountain College Collection, gift
of the estate of Jonathan Williams. 2010.20.29.
Fielding Dawson (1930-2002) was born
in New York City. He studied at Black Mountain College with Charles Olson. He
was primarily known as writer, but he also painted and worked with collage.
Dawson attended Black Mountain College from 1949 to 1953. Afterward he served
in the United States Army from 1953 to 1955. He is the author of 21 books, including
short stories and novels. Dawson’s novel, “The Black Mountain Book,” was
published in 1991.
Dawson was known for his
stream-of-consciousness style of writing. He used minimal punctuation to
emphasize the immediacy of his thoughts. His direct approach to writing was
similar to that of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.
Dawson was also a teacher. He worked
with prisoners at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, NY, and at-risk
students at Upward Bound High School in Hartwick, NY. Dawson often wrote about
his experiences as a teacher. Dawson said that he expected the truth in his
students’ work, and as disturbing as that could often be, he refused to look
away. This passion for reality ran through his life and work.
This work is a portrait of the poet
Charles Olson (1910-1970). Olson taught literature at Black Mountain College
starting as a part-time lecturer in 1948 and by the time of the College’s
closing in 1957 was the titular head of the school.
Charles Olson the artwork has an
interesting history in its own right. The collage is an early artwork by
Dawson. It was originally meant to be the album cover for a Folkways recording
of Olson reading his poems. When that project fell through, Jonathan Williams,
founder of the Jargon Society planned to use it for the back cover of “Jargon
24, The Maximus Poems.” This book was co-published with Corinth Press which
wanted to use a standard paperback book format and the square format collage
did not fit well in this more vertical proportion. After this effort it became
part of Jonathan Williams’s personal collection until it was given to the
Asheville Art Museum.
This work is currently on view in Looking
Back: Celebrating 60 Years of Collecting at the Asheville Art Museum.
March 30, 2011
Harry Shokler (1896-1978).
Early Spring, 1946.
Screen
print, 15.13 x 22 inches.
Collection
of the Asheville Art Museum. Gift of Leah Karpen. 1997.08.02.64.
Harry Shokler was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. He studied at the Cincinnati Art
Academy, the Chester Springs Academy (Pennsylvania) and the New York School of
Fine and Applied Arts. A fellowship enabled him to spend several years painting
in Europe and North Africa. While overseas he had a solo exhibition of his
paintings at the Gallerie de Marsan in Paris. Shokler also participated in the
Salon des Beaux Arts in Paris. After he returned to the United States, he
had solo exhibitions at Grand Central Galleries, New York City and the
Baltimore Museum of Art. For forty years Shokler and his wife, the writer
Dahris Martin, made their home in Londonderry, Vermont.
Shokler
was noted as a printmaker. He worked with a variety of printmaking processes while
employed by the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Artists Project (WPA).
Because of his interest in color, Shokler began to explore the possibilities of
silk screen printing. Early Spring depicts a leafless tree with a road and
fields in foreground done in greens and browns; the background consists of
hills and sky in various blues and grays. With its many bold colors is a nice
example of the potential that Shokler saw in screen printing.
His screen prints, acclaimed for
their extraordinary artistry and skill, are in the collections of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Carnegie Institute (Pittsburgh), Library of Congress (Washington, DC), the Princeton
Print Club and the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). He was the
recipient of several awards and author of the standard “Artists Manual of Silk
Screen Printing.” He was a member of the Silk Screen Group, president of the
National Serigraph Society and taught screen printing at the Brooklyn Museum of
Art School.
Before
the 1930s, screen printing was considered a commercial process and not suitable
for creating works of art. Harry Shokler and a handful of other artists
participating in a pilot screen printing program for the WPA transformed screen
printing, or serigraphy, into a process used in the production of fine art
prints.
Leah
Karpen, who donated two of Shokler’s works to the Asheville Art Museum, had a
personal connection to the artist. Her sister-in-law Ruth Robinson was
Shokler’s niece.
Early Spring is currently on view in
the Museum’s Looking Forward installation of the permanent collection.
Opening April 30, Artists at Work: American Printmakers and the WPA will
include screen prints and other printmaking processes used by artists in the
WPA.
March 9, 2011
John Sloan
(1871-1951)
Fun One Cent, 1905
Etching, 9.25 x 11.63 inches sheet size
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
Museum purchase with funds provided by Leah Karpen, Fran Myers, Kenneth Myers,
Russell and Ladene Newton and Ute Roth in memory of Nat C. Myers and Dick
Albyn.
2009.06.63
John Sloan was born in Lock Haven,
Pennsylvania and grew up in Philadelphia. He studied at the Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts in 1892, with Thomas Anshutz, and later with Robert
Henri. Sloan worked as an illustrator for two Philadelphia newspapers, the Enquirer
and the Press. Sloan moved to New York in 1904, and continued
working in commercial art until 1916 when he began a long association
with the Art Students League as a teacher. He was a member of The Eight,
a loose association of artists.
Along with Sloan, The Eight
included Arthur B. Davies, William Glackens, Robert Henri, Ernest Lawson,
George Luks, Maurice Prendergast and Everett Shinn. They exhibited as a group
only once, at the Macbeth Gallery in 1908. Many of these artists, including
Sloan, had a strong interest in depicting scenes from everyday life and became
known as the “Ashcan School.” Sloan was deeply concerned about the life of the
working class and joined the Socialist Party in 1910. He was the art editor of The
Masses from 1912 until 1916.
John Sloan was highly regarded as a
painter, but he was also known for his extraordinary prints, many depicting in
New York City from the tenements to the art galleries. In the 1913 Armory show
Sloan exhibited two paintings and five prints. And while Sloan is commonly associated
with urban views, he also created landscapes of Gloucester, MA and Santa Fe, NM
and was noted for figure studies. Fun One Cent, depicts a Kinetoscope
parlor. The first public parlor opened in New York City at Broadway and 27th
Street in 1894. Developed by Thomas Edison, the Kinetoscope was one of the
first successful motion picture devices. Its primary limitation was that only
one person could watch at a time. But in the late 19th and early 20th
century they were wildly popular and Kinetoscope parlors opened all across the
United States and abroad.
March 2, 2011
James Chapin (1887-1975)
Nine Workmen, 1942-45
Oil on canvas, 42.75 x 57.75 inches
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
Museum purchase. 1985.04.2.21
James
Chapin (1887-1975) was born in West Orange, New Jersey. From 1911 to 1912
Chapin studied at the Royal Academy of Art in Antwerp, Belgium. After returning
to the United States he lived in Greenwich Village. During this time he
learned about Cubism and Cezanne, but his main interest was the portrayal of
people and his subject matter varied from farmers and farm life to workmen and
urban life.
In
1924 he moved to a log cabin in northwestern New Jersey, whose bucolic setting
became a dominant influence on his artistic career. In 1935 Chapin began
teaching advanced portrait painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts and in the late 1930s; he accepted a teaching position in California.
There he met and married Mary Fischer. James Chapin is the grandfather of
musician Harry Chapin.
In
1969 the Chapins moved to Toronto. Shortly after becoming a Canadian citizen
and only days after his eighty-eighth birthday, Chapin died in July 1975.
In
the 1930s and into the early 1940s, Social Realism was the dominant style in
American art. Three of the best known Social Realists are Thomas Hart Benton,
John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood. The Works Progress Administration’s Federal
Artists Project produced murals, easel paintings and prints, predominantly
Social Realists works that emphasized the lives of farmers and ranchers in
rural areas and workers and “the common man” in urban settings. After World War
II ended, the United States embraced Abstract Expressionism and many of the
artists associated with Social Realism lapsed into obscurity.
This
change in style, and perhaps his move to Canada in the 1960s, affected the
career of James Chapin. The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in
Social Realism including many exhibitions. The Asheville Art Museum purchased
this work in 1985. It has been enjoyed by generations of school children and
adults, first in the Museum’s location at the Civic Center and now in our home
in Pack Place. The Museum moved to Pack Place 19 years ago this month.
Chapin’s
Nine Workmen shows nine men of varying age and race and profession. The men are
treated with dignity and respect. The workers in the foreground and those in
the background are painted more softly than the figures in the center. This
creates a sense of depth to the painting.
The
painting is currently on view, so whether you are seeing it as an old friend or
for the first time, drop by and spend a moment with The Nine Workmen.
February 16, 2011
John Pfahl (1939- )
Fish,
Cypress Gardens, Florida, 2001.
Type C color negative print, 20 x 24
inches.
Museum purchase with funds provided
by the Nat C. Myers Photography Fund.
Asheville Art Museum Collection.
2011.06.92.
John Pfahl is an important American photographer. He
was among a small group of artists who, beginning in the post war years, began
to explore the limits of color photography. Pfahl’s photographs combine
beautiful colors, dynamic compositions, whimsy and sometimes a dash of humor.
Many of his image capture landscapes modified by humanity. His photographs
blazed a trail that has been followed by new generations of younger
photographers. John Pfahl first became known for his color landscape
images with his 1974 Altered Landscapes series. He received a Bachelor
of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University School of Art and his Master of
Arts degree from Syracuse University School of Communications. Pfahl taught at
Rochester Institute of Technology from 1968 to 1983. Pfahl has appeared in
over 100 group and solo exhibitions, and his work is represented in at least
forty-five public and corporate collections. The Asheville Art Museum has
approximately 400 photographs in its permanent collection. The collection
includes a wide range of processes and ranges in date from the early 20th
century to the early 21st, including works by many significant
American photographers. The collection includes works by Shelby Lee Adams,
Diane Arbus, Ruth Bernhard, Lee Friedlander, Sally Gall, O. Winston Link, Jerry
Uelsmann, Jonathan Williams and Garry Winogrand. The two Pfahl works acquired
this year add significantly to the collection.
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American Style Magazine names Asheville as one of the Top 25 Small Cities and Arts Destinations in the nation with special mention of the Museum's plans for expansion. 
