To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America

“To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America,” a traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum that just opened at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., will be on view at the Georgia Museum of Art from Feb. 18 to April 16, 2012.

George Ault’s paintings exemplify personal worlds of clarity he used to offset the turbulent 1940s and a real world he felt was in crisis. Many of his works of art, which are some of the most original paintings made in America during those years, have yet to be seen. Ault and other artists, such as Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, confronted the chaos and devastating uncertainty of the war-time turmoil of those years through their paintings, revealing an aesthetic of 1940s American art that has not been previously identified.

This is the first major exhibition of Ault’s work in more than 20 years and includes 47 paintings and drawings by Ault and his contemporaries. It centers on five paintings Ault made between 1943 and 1948 depicting the crossroads of Russell’s Corners in Woodstock, N.Y.

This exhibition will also be featured at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C.

Learn more about this exhibition here.

Image Caption: 

George Ault (1891–1948)

Bright Light at Russell's Corners, 1946.

Oil on canvas. 19 5/8 x 25 inches.

Smithsonian American Art Museum

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Lawrence

New York trip

Just recently back from New York City where I spent Wednesday visiting galleries, including Michael Rosenfeld Gallery (where I saw the abstract expressionism display), Hollis Taggart Galleries, and Kraushaar Galleries. Future exhibitions, possible acquisitions, and other projects should result. I also visited the Whitney Museum of American Art and especially enjoyed the Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Times exhibition. The Whitney had a "no photography at all" rule and a security guard in every single gallery, so my stealth picture-taking was more limited than normal. The display had plenty of well-known Hoppers, of course, but included Reginald Marsh, Charles Burchfield, Alfred Stieglitz, Ben Shahn, and many other artists that helped contextualize Hopper's career.

On Thursday, I spent all day in the West Village and in Newark, New Jersey meeting with board members from The Heliker-LaHotan Foundation and viewing the warehouse storage space where many John Heliker paintings and sketchbooks are kept. A future project or two might result from the meeting.

CAA New York

Last week I attended the 99th annual conference of the College Art Association (CAA) in New York. The main impetus for my attendance this year was an invitation to participate in a session on technologies used for teaching art and art history called “Digital to Analog: Changing Technologies.” My fellow presenters were Cherise Smith, from the art history faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, and Wendy Redstar, a studio art professor at Portland State University. My paper gave an overview and evaluation of the Georgia Museum of Art’s use of technology for education, as well as our presentation of new media art. Items I covered included our new website and some of its in-the-works additions; our forthcoming smart phone apps; the Second Life version of our museum; our Kress Project and its potential for new media submissions; our collections database and our plans to upgrade it; the digitization of our Pierre Daura finding aid; digital didactics I’m considering for our galleries; and our new media and time-based exhibition programming in our Alonzo and Vallye Dudley Gallery (currently featuring a video by Anthony Goicolea). The audience seemed duly impressed with our many initiatives, and I’m pleased to say that my paper was very well received.

More important, my solicitation for other ideas on how to use technology to further our mission was met with enthusiastic feedback after the session. Perhaps the most exciting idea I heard was from Matthew Lewis (London Metropolitan University), who told me about an iPhone app developed by the Learning Technologies Research Institute, London. This app offers a real-time/real-space digital overlay of what various historic building components looked like in the past and/or their interior construction. One way this might be applicable to us would be to use it for our Menabuoi altarpiece reconstruction in our Kress Gallery, where there is currently a wall drawing that suggests the original ensemble. Building on our wall drawing and incorporating the dismembered Menabuoi panels, such an application might begin by providing information about typical trecento iconographic programs (the placement of saints, for instance). It could then show you images of some of the elements of the altarpiece that have been identified and explain how their exact placements are uncertain (e.g., the three-quarter-length saints in the second register, or the roundel figures at the top). Then you could decide where you think these elements should go: You would hold your iPhone or similar device up, and, on your screen, you would see what the whole thing might have looked like as you move your phone around in front of you. How cool is that!?

This year’s conference offered many other useful sessions, and I was especially gratified to see that more museum-related topics were offered than in the past. Of particular interest to me was one entitled “Making Museums Matter: Integrating Collection and Exhibition Programs with College Curriculum.” Colette Crossman from the Blanton Museum of Art at UT Austin discussed ways to engage chemistry, studio art and art history majors in the galleries through conservation studies programs, which included unframing paintings in the gallery to allow students to further their understanding of technical and stylistic issues. Carin Jacobs (Graduate Theological Union) focused on faculty use of museums’ collections and ways to encourage repeated visits and sustained close looking. One of the best suggestions I heard was to solicit extended label text (the descriptions that sometimes follow the basic label information) from professors in multiple departments. That way, a single work of art might have two, three, or even more labels addressing connections to a wide range of different academic disciplines, all with the authors’ information given. According to Jacobs, this method helps break away from the single, authoritative, institutional voice common to this type of text.

Another particularly relevant session for me was entitled “Recurating,” in which one of the topics was the recreation of historical exhibitions. As I am currently preparing something of a re-creation of the 1930 exhibition of the group Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square), Reesa Greenberg’s discussion of similar projects involving El Lissitzky’s 1927 Cabinet of Abstraction offered valuable insights about the issues involved in such undertakings. Another noteworthy session (although there were many others of scholarly interest to me) was called “Beyond the Slideshow: Teaching the History of Art and Material Culture in the Age of New Media” and was a good complement to my session. David Jaffee discussed the Digital Media Lab at the Bard Graduate Center, which is a wonderful model for using technology for teaching. Its use of wikis for course materials was especially inspiring. Donald Beetham from Rutgers University presented art-historical uses for Second Life, where GMOA was used as an example of what museums are doing in the virtual world.

In other College Art Association news, Georgia Strange, director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art, was elected to the CAA Board of Directors. Congratulations, Georgia! We're all glad you'll be helping lead this important organization. On a historical note, Lamar Dodd himself was the 1954-56 president of CAA.

Of course, being in New York City, it would have been criminal not to see some art too. I visited some galleries in Chelsea, where the most impressive show I saw was Christian Marclay’s “The Clock” at Paula Cooper Gallery. It’s a 24-hour montage of scenes from different Hollywood movies in which a clock appears. All of the times that appear in Marclay’s video correspond to the actual time the viewer is seeing them. The exhibition has been the rave of the New York art scene, and as Marclay is someone I’ve been following for years—I know him through his interest in music, sound, and visual art--it was great to see him get this kind of recognition.

I managed to make it to MOMA (or at least their second, fourth and fifth floors), the Met (albeit far too briefly), and the Guggenheim for its exhibition “Art in Upheaval: Modern Art from the Guggenheim Collection, 1910–1918," which was also right up my alley. I do have to say that my past adoration of these venerable institutions was diminished somewhat now that I compare every museum to our own newly renovated and expanded facility. We really do have a world-class building and collection! I had hoped to visit the Frick Collection and the New Museum while I was there, but when in NYC, there never seems to be enough time. At least I’ve always got reasons to go back!

"Andy Warhol: The Last Decade"

Andy Warhol often evokes visions of colorful images, including soup cans, celebrities and other pop culture icons. People usually do not think about the last works done by the king of pop [art]. After 1968, a noticeable change in subject matter and methodology took place in his work. An assassination attempt would understandably leave one questioning beliefs, including one’s validity as an artist. These changes include a return to painting and darker imagery. An exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum focuses on his prolific later creations.

“Andy Warhol: The Last Decade” begins with a piece from 1978 and includes work up until his untimely death at age 58 in 1987. The work ranges from pop art mixed with abstracted splatters to Oxidation Paintings. He worked with admired artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente, which lead him to use canvas, a material he had not used in years. Some of the pieces have darker connotations. According to a New York Times article, “the titles themselves speak volumes: The American Indian, Athletes, Torsos, Portraits of the Jews of the 20th Century, Dollar Signs, Knives, Guns, [and] Myths.” The constant fear of death was apparent in his piece “Self-Portrait (Strangulation).” A collection of 10 small canvases features him looking upward while being strangled by an unknown hand. This mirrors his previous self-portraits, with the photographic image over large color blocks, however contains a darker twist than his typical surprised expression.

His oxidation paintings are surprisingly beautiful, with golds and greens that radiate from the black linen. The Abstract Expressionist-like paintings are made with “ethereal loops of one pale color drifting across clouds of others, [and] suggest languid wrist action, even though it is hard to figure out exactly what is printed and what is painted.” His largest work, a collection of canvases totaling 32 feet, takes cues from da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It mixes motorcycles and religion into one erotic piece.

Joseph D. Ketner II, the show curator, wrote an essay explaining the show:

“It retraces the evolution of the paintings on view and the increasingly close collaborative methods of Warhol and his studio assistants. It also provides a vivid sense of Warhol’s relatively vulnerable frame of mind, his yearning for approbation and his encounters with old master painting, which helped revive his own interest in painting.” (http://nyti.ms/9xv9bi)

If you visit the New York/Brooklyn area before September 12, be sure to check out the exhibition, which contains the best of approximately 3,500 works from Warhol’s last ten years. For more information on museum location and hours, please go to http://bit.ly/davApp.

If you are interested in seeing Warhol’s work locally, GMOA owns a selection of screen prints from Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Portfolio I series as well as a number of the artist’s photographs. At least one of his works will be on view permanently when the museum reopens in January 2011.

Re:Construction

We’ve all had awful experiences with construction sites­. They cause traffic, never seem to end, and are dangerous and not so pretty, but the Alliance for Downtown New York has introduced a public art program called Re:Construction that turns construction sites into works of art.

Construction projects are everywhere in Lower Manhattan, and the poor economy delays completion, causing the sites to become seemingly permanent. The goal of Re:Construction is to make these sites into “canvases for innovative public art and architecture.” The project’s curator is BravinLee Programs, run by Karin Bravin and John Lee.

Photo credit: BravinLee Programs

All of the projects in Re:Construction “bring color, movement and scenic beauty” to the construction sites. Botanizing on the Asphalt (above) by Nina Bovasso covers 400 feet of jersey barriers at Hudson River Park. Fence Embroidery with Embellishment (below) by Katherine Daniels consists of such materials as spools, jar lids and wire mesh. The installation runs 600 feet along a construction fence.

Photo credit: Nina Bovasso

Re:Construction has been ongoing since 2007 when the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) awarded the Downtown Alliance $1.5 million for the project. Check out the Re:Construction Web site for more photos and information.

A Word from Our Interns

We try to write most posts on this blog in first-person plural, as a lot of different people contribute to it, but our wonderful interns do quite a bit of the writing. Lauren Kelley, who's been helping out in the PR department this summer, wrote the following for us about her recent trip to New York:

Last weekend I ventured to NYC (via Airtran U--if you’re between ages 18 and 22 you can fly standby for $69 each way--I recommend you use it while you can) to visit one of my best friends. She's studying art and art history at UGA and was probably the best hostess to have in the city. Not a minute was wasted. Reflecting on my jaunt, I realized that we experienced three very distinct and specific art encounters, one each day.

On Friday amongst our walking, window-shopping and catching up we meandered to a gallery she had on her list to visit. In the SoHo area, The Spencer Brownstone Gallery is hosting a special exhibition presented by VICE magazine. On view are photographs coinciding with the VICE Photo Issue 2009, taken by Terry Richardson, Ryan McGinley, Jerry Hsu, Keiichi Nitta, amongst others. The small, contemporary gallery was the perfect blank canvas for VICE's youthful, raw and intimate exhibit.



The art encounter of day two began after an L train ride south to Brooklyn. That night one of my friend's classmates from UGA was performing at Monkeytown, a dining and video performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I saw, or experienced rather, Brian's performance at the Lamar Dodd School of Art exit show last May, and was ecstatic to see him perform again. He uses his interactive new media skill set to trigger and manipulate sounds, which interact with visuals projected onto a screen. This performance space bordered with overly comfortable couches and four wall-to-wall projection screens was the perfect frame for Brian's interactive art and music. It's difficult to describe this work, so check out his website for detailed descriptions, videos and updates, and if you ever have the chance to see him perform live, don't pass it up.



My friend and I took the more traditional route on day three and visited The Metropolitan Museum of Art. With not nearly enough time to even begin a thorough visit, we did manage to view the entire Model as Muse exhibition, which showcases 20th-century photographs, videos and couture and serenades you with corresponding tunes. The overwhelming amount of beauty really makes you appreciate the art of fashion.