New exhibitions to open Saturday

This Saturday, May 14, we have two new exhibitions opening at the museum: "American Watercolors from the Permanent Collection" and "The Art of Disegno: Italian Prints and Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art." The former received some coverage from Art Knowledge News this week and covers a wide range of some of our more delicate works, rarely on display because of their fragility. Some of these are featured in our recently published catalogue "One Hundred American Paintings," such as the John Marin image pictured above, Jasper Francis Cropsey's "The Palisades, Hudson River," Arthur B. Davies' "Castles in Spain" and Charles Burchfield's "October Wind and Sunlight in the Woods."

The other exhibition, "The Art of Disegno," was organized by the museum some years ago, with the help of guest curators Robert Randolf Coleman (of Notre Dame) and Babette Bohn (of Texas Christian University), but has not been on display here. It previously traveled to the Snite Museum at Notre Dame and will be on view at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, Calif., in November. The exhibition culls 53 prints and drawings from the 16th through 18th centuries to look at the growing importance of disegno (or "drawing") during that time. It is accompanied by a catalogue the museum published a couple of years ago.

We hope you'll join us for both these wonderful exhibitions, as well as for "Dalí Illustrates Dante's Divine Comedy," already up in the galleries.

Keepin’ It Surreal Student Night at GMOA

Photos from GMOA’s second student night, Keepin’ It Surreal, are now posted on our Flickr and Facebook pages. The Georgia Museum of Art Student Association hosted the student night on Thursday, April 21, at GMOA. Circulatory System and Never played, and there was a DJ set by Stay at Home Dad. Cookies and milk were served midway through the event in the GMOA lobby, and student docents conducted tours of the exhibitions throughout the night. Elliott King, a leader in the critical study of Salvador Dalí’s work after 1940, gave a special tour of our exhibition “Dalí Illustrates Dante’s ’Divine Comedy‘” at 10 p.m. after his lecture at the museum earlier in the evening. The event was attended by 450 students!

GMOA in the News

Our thanks to Howard Pousner, who turned in a wonderful article on our Dalí exhibition. We're always happy to get coverage of any kind in the AJC, but Howard is a stellar writer and a very nice guy to boot, and we love working with him. Our galleries are closed today, but come see the Dalí show tomorrow, or, better yet, come to the lecture at 5:30 p.m. Thursday and stick around for Student Night: Keepin' It Surreal that evening.

GMOA in the News

The Red & Black has been calling us up left and right lately, and here's one of the articles that's resulted, on our exhibition "Dalí Illustrates Dante's Divine Comedy." It also includes some racy talk by curator Lynn Boland!

New Exhibitions Start Opening This Weekend

Here's how the press release reads:

"Dalí Illustrates Dante's Divine Comedy" on view at Georgia Museum of Art
April 10 to June 19, 2011

Writer/Contact: Jenny Williams, 706/542-9078, collardj@uga.edu

Athens, Ga. – The Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia will exhibit “Dalí Illustrates Dante’s Divine Comedy,” organized by the Las Cruces Museum of Art, Las Cruces, N.M., April 10 to June 19.

The exhibition at GMOA is part of a 10-city national tour during a three-year period containing all 100 prints from Dalí’s Divine Comedy Suite. The exhibition also features text panels in English and Spanish. The tour has been developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company from Kansas City, Mo.

In 1957, the Italian government commissioned Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) to illustrate Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) “Divine Comedy.”Dalí’s watercolors were to be reproduced as wood engravings and released as a limited-edition print suite in honor of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s birth. Often considered to be the greatest work of medieval European literature, the “Divine Comedy,” written between 1307 and 1321, describes Dante’s symbolic journey through Hell (Inferno), Purgatory (Purgatorio) and Heaven (Paradiso). The epic poem comprises three books of 33 cantos each, plus an introductory canto.

Upon receiving the commission, Dalí immediately began creating a series of 100 watercolors, each one illustrating a canto from the poem. When the project was announced to the public, Italians were outraged that a Spaniard had been chosen for it, and the commission was rescinded. Dalí, confident that a publisher could be found, continued to work.

To translate Dalí’s watercolors into printed plates, two artists hand carved 3,500 blocks, an average of 35 separate blocks per print, a process that lasted five years. French publishers Éditions les Heures Clairesand Éditions Joseph Horet jointly produced the Divine Comedy Print Suite in 1964. Dalí considered this project one of the most important of his career.

As a young artist, Dalí moved freely among various forms of art, including traditional painting, cubism, futurism and metaphysical painting. A visit to Paris introduced Dalí to artists and writers influenced by the controversial theories of Sigmund Freud. His artistic activities also included sculpture and film, and he is credited with contributions to theater, fashion and photography.

Born in Florence in 1265, Dante is regarded as Tuscany’s greatest poet. His first written work, “La Vita Nuova,” was completed in 1294 as a tribute to his love and muse Beatrice, who guides him through Paradiso in the “Divine Comedy.” Dante began composing the “Divine Comedy” in Verona, Italy, where he was living in political exile, and completed it in 1321, shortly before his death in Ravenna, Italy.

“The interdisciplinary nature of this exhibition especially befits a university museum,” said Lynn Boland, GMOA Pierre Daura Curator of European Art and the exhibition’s in-house curator. “In addition to connecting 14th-century Italian literature and 20th-century visual art, the suite also makes references to, for example, hyper dimensional geometry.”

In conjunction with the exhibition, a large-scale bronze by Dalí entitled “Angel of Victory” from the museum’s permanent collection will be on view in the Patsy Dudley Pate Balcony.

The exhibition also will offer insights into other artistic representations of Dante’s Commedia—from Botticelli to Robert Rauschenberg—with a reading area organized by Boland.

Jeff Koons at the High

Contemporary art fans take note. The High Museum of Art in Atlanta will host a lecture by artist Jeff Koons on October 5. He will discuss the influence of Salvador Dalí on his own work in honor of the High’s current exhibition: “Dalí: The Late Work.”

The lecture will take place at 7 p.m. in Symphony Hall. Tickets are $15 for non-members, $10 for members, and $5 for students with a valid I.D. Reserve tickets through the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office at 404-733-5000 and www.High.org.

For more information about the High’s lecture series, visit http://bit.ly/ahDvlJ, and to learn more about Jeff Koons and his work, visit his site.

Image: Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Blue)

Update on Dalí exhibition

“Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” is currently on view at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Click here to read our blog post about the exhibition.

Lynn Boland, GMOA’s Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, will be giving a lecture as part of the exhibition. He will discuss the Surrealist movement and its underlying theories along with an overview of Dalí’s art and his relationship with other Surrealists.

His lecture, “The Supreme Pleasure of Being Salvador Dalí: Hand-painted Dreams and Surrealism Nightmares,” will take place on November 4 at 7 p.m. in the Rich Theater in Atlanta. The lecture is free but seating is limited. Contact the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office at 404.733.5000 for tickets (limited to two per person).

Dali's Good Idea of a Joke

Kate Murphy of the New York Times lifts our spirits with a quirky story from Houston. In small thrift store in a rather questionable part of town, lie, in a glass case, surrounded by used 1980s fashion and Jesus paraphenalia, six lithographs that appear to be by the artist Salvador Dali (the signature may or may not be fake). The provenance is debated and the authenticity questionable, although there is some seemingly convincing evidence that these thrift store Dalis might be real.

According to the Salvation Army, the works were donated last year by a woman who is a longtime supporter of that charity’s Adult Rehabilitation Center for substance abusers in Houston… “I sold them to a dealer in Texas,” he said, declining to identify the person. That dealer, he added, subsequently sold the works to the woman who donated them to the Salvation Army, whom Mr. Hochman described as the wealthy widow of an oil magnate 

The price of these pieces has escalated to $8,000 each, and they all have legitimate documentation from the previous owners of the pieces. Start scouring your local thrift stores, who knows what you’ll find!

Click to reach the NYTimes article: So Surreal: Thrift Shop Art May Be by Dalí