GMOA Curator to Lecture on Dalí

Image courtesy of the High Museum of Art

Lynn Boland, Pierre Daura Curator of European Art at the Georgia Museum of Art and adjunct professor of art history at the University of Georgia, will lecture on Salvador Dalí and his connections to Surrealism at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

In “The Supreme Pleasure of Being Salvador Dalí: Hand-painted Dreams and Surrealism Nightmares,” Boland will speak about the Surrealist movement as well as an overview of Dalí’s art. He will cover Dalí’s relationship with other Surrealists and how they affected his later career.

The lecture will be held in the Hill Auditorium on Thursday, November 4th, at 7 PM.

Tickets are free but limited to 2 per person. They are available through the Woodruff Arts Center Box Office at 404-733-5000. Tickets to the Museum are sold separately.

High Museum of Art Exhibits Titian Masterpieces

The exhibition, “Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian Painting: Masterpieces from the National Galleries of Scotland” opened at the High Museum of Art this month on Saturday, October 16, and GMOA’s Board of Advisors viewed it yesterday while having their meeting in Atlanta.

Featuring 12 paintings and 13 drawings by artists of the time, the exhibition highlights the work of Venetian Renaissance master Tiziano Vecellio, known as Titian.

Best known for his Diana series, Titian engages his masterful use of light and distinctive brushstroke to tell the story of the ancient Roman goddess. The exhibition features two of these famous paintings, “Diana and Actaeon” and “Diana and Callisto.” Both were painted between 1556 and 1559 for King Philip II of Spain and are part of a six-painting series.

“These really are two of the greatest paintings anywhere on the planet," said Michael Clarke, director of the National Galleries of Scotland.

In addition to four paintings by Titian (the Diana paintings are flanked by two smaller works), the exhibition also features several of his drawings. As Titian saw no value in drawings beyond rough drafts for his paintings, he made little effort to preserve them and very few survive today.

Many of the works evoke religious and mythological themes characteristic of the Venetian Golden Age, and several draw from stories in Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” a very popular theme at the time. The exhibition will be on display at the High Museum of Art until January 2.

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).

Atlanta Artist to be Featured at High

Radcliffe Bailey, Windward Coast (detail), 2009. Piano keys, plaster bust, glitter. Collection of the artist.

The High Museum of Art announced recently that it will be organizing the most comprehensive display of work by Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey. “Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine” will comprise 25 works, demonstrating the artist’s diverse use of media by showcasing sculptures, paintings, installations, works-on-paper, glass works and modified found objects. The exhibition is scheduled to premiere a year from now, on June 28, 2011, and feature works created specifically for the exhibition, as well as previous pieces never before seen on public display.

Bailey, born in New Jersey, was raised in Atlanta and graduated from the Atlanta College of Art in 1991. He first gained acclaim in 1996 for his large-scale mural, “Saints,” which was commissioned during the 1996 Summer Olympics and remains on view in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. He later taught at the University of Georgia’s Lamar Dodd School of Art for five years, from 2001 to 2006.

Bailey’s exhibition at the High will be divided up into the three main themes of “Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” “Water” contains pieces referring to the Black Atlantic as a site of both historical trauma and artistic and spiritual growth; “Blues” refers to the importance of music in this spiritual journey; “Blood” focuses on ancestry, race, and sacrifice.

All pieces have significant ties to family, history and the South. One portion of the exhibition features seven sets of “medicine cabinet sculptures” composed of raw materials such as tobacco leaves and Georgia red clay.

“Radcliffe Bailey’s art is consistently informed by a strong social and historical consciousness, and solidly grounded in family and community. The exhibition combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory,” said Carol Thompson, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art and curator of the exhibition. “Bailey’s art traces the complex network of his ‘aesthetic DNA’ to create an antidote to cultural and historical amnesia,” she continued.

The High will also juxtapose classic African sculptures from the museum’s permanent collection with the exhibition to emphasize the influence of African art on Bailey’s work. The exhibition is set to premiere on June 28, 2011, and run until September 11, 2011.

For more information on this exhibition, please click here.

Automobiles and art

The Tel Aviv Museum of Art in Israel presents Sculpture on Wheels, an exhibition including 16 cars designed by famous European and American designers. Sculpture on Wheels represents a “historical view of the development of car design in the 20th century.”

Fifteen of the cars were selected from Israeli collectors, and one is the BMW 320i Art Car (above) painted by Roy Lichtenstein and comes from the BMW collection in Berlin. Lichtenstein comments on his work:

I wanted the lines I painted to be a depiction of the road showing the car where to go – the design also shows the countryside through which the car has traveled. One could call it an enumeration of everything a car experiences, only that this car reflects all of these things before actually having been on a road.

Another one of Lichtenstein’s pieces is part of the museum’s permanent collection. The Tel Aviv Museum Mural (1989) is a diptych and reflects some of the aspects of the Art Car. It also refers to other works in the museum’s collection, such as Marc Chagall and Picasso. An image of the left panel is shown below.

The High Museum of Art also has an automobile exhibition entitled The Allure of the Automobile. The exhibition presents 18 of the world’s rarest cars from the 1930s to the mid-1960s and also shows the evolution of the motorcar. The exhibition is on view through June 27.

In April 2009, the Collectors of the Friends of GMOA presented Art on Wheels, a celebration of automotive design at the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, which included a 1962 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud limousine and a 1964 Lincoln Continental convertible, among others. Click here to see professional photos from the event.

Art Opening at the High- "European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century"

The High Museum of Art is known for its impressive 19th-century American decorative arts collection of antique furniture and design, ranging from a beautiful red sofa by John Jelliff and Company of New Jersey, circa 1865- 1875, to the colorful Quilted Bedcover by an unknown African American maker circa 1875-1900. However, June 5, 2010, marks a shift in the museum’s focus on design with the opening of “European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century,” which runs until August 29, 2010.

Working with Modern Atlanta (MA), the museum hopes that the public will respond well to the exhibition covering the last twenty years of design. As local schools and universities like SCAD Atlanta and Georgia Tech supply creative energy and students, Atlanta appears to be in the market for more contemporary exhibitions. MA hosts events “to promote design excellence that comes through the creation of sought-after services and desirable products that inspire and satisfy the needs of humanity, and in turn, encourage sustainable practices in lives, businesses, and the public” (http://bit.ly/c2pNkn). The exhibition coincides with six days of presentations focusing on contemporary design as well as “Design After Dark,” a cocktail party on the High's piazza on Saturday, June 5, 2010, from 7 to 11 pm.

The exhibition will include works from fourteen Western European countries and designers including John Angelo Benson and Ron Arad. The pieces seek to overcome traditional boundaries set by politics and culture and reach a higher aesthetic of art and design. Using materials like hay, glass or metalwork, the furniture comes together as visually stunning and avant-garde.

For more information on the exhibition, please visit http://bit.ly/9C4mZZ. Also, check out last week’s AccessAtlanta article for information on the collaboration between the High and MA.

GMOA in the News

There's a very nice article this morning in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the Georgia Art Museum Partnership, a collaboration among GMOA, the High Museum of Art, the Albany Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum and the Telfair Museum of Art. Initially, the program will last three years, but it may be extended.

Art Around Athens

The opening reception for the First Annual Juried Student Exhibition at the Lamar Dodd School of Art will take place on Friday, Oct. 23, from 5 to 7 p.m. in galleries 101 and 307 of the Dodd, on UGA’s East Campus. Undergraduate and graduate students were asked to submit two works to be judged by Julian Cox, curator of photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Cox selected 82 works from 292 submissions, and they will be on display at the school of art from Oct. 23 to Nov. 10.



ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art will host the event “Head Lines: News-themed Stories and Poems,” on Friday, Oct. 23, 2009, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. “Head Lines,” organized by Matt Forsythe, Andy Frazee and Ida Stewart, is part of the VOX Reading Series; in keeping with the theme of ATHICA’s current exhibition, “Free Press in Free Fall,” eight local writers will read selections that address the effects of news on the lives of its consumers. The participating writers are Erin Christian, John English (reading from “Good News, Bad News”), Jeff Fallis, Michael Ford, Matt Forsythe, Andy Frazee, Kyle Garrett and Nicole Higgins. Refreshments will be provided at intermission, and a donation of $3 to $6 is suggested.



This Saturday, Oct. 24, come see the scarecrows in the exhibition “Scare up a Harvest: Help the Hungry Scarecrow,” at the Lyndon House Arts Center. Bring your pop-top cans of ravioli to pay your entry fee and support the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia. Visitors will get the chance to vote for their favorite scarecrows and make their own miniature scarecrows with Georgia Museum of Art volunteers. This event is sponsored by the Lyndon House Arts Center, the Athens-Clarke County Recycling Division, the Food Bank of Northeast Georgia, the Junior League of Athens and the Georgia Museum of Art.



“Brick House Studio Exhibition, Fall 2009,” opens this Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 24 and 25, from 1 to 5 p.m. Works by Tex Crawford, D.M. Kirwin and Brian Reade as well as an ongoing sculpture installation by Doug Makemson will be on view through Nov. 22 at the Brick House Studio at 1892 Athens Rd., Crawford, Ga.



Sunday, Oct. 25, the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation will host its 10th Annual Wine Fest fundraiser at the Ashford Manor Gardens in Watkinsville, Ga., from 3 to 6 p.m. Along with the wine-tasting activities, there will be live music and a silent auction and raffle of original artwork, pottery, vacation properties and airline tickets. For more information, visit the OCAF Web site.

LDSOA's First Annual Juried Student Exhibitions

The Lamar Dodd School of Art is spearheading the first annual juried student exhibitions!

Undergraduate and graduate students can submit two works to Gallery 101 from 12-4 on October 16,17, and 18th. The work will be juried by Julian Cox, Curator of Photography at the High Museum in Atlanta, on October 20th. The exhibition will open in School of Art Galleries 101 and 307 on Friday, October 23rd at 5 PM and will run through November 10th.