ROOM GUIDE Beyeler Collection Nature + Abstraction

FONDATION BEYELER BEYELER COLLECTION INTRODUCTION NATURE + ABSTRACTION 20 May–12 August 2018 Nature and abstraction have long been a couple in art. With Works by Brice Marden from the Daros Collection This year’s second collection presentation shows how differently artists explore this twosome. From Claude Monet to Roni Horn, from Piet Mondrian to Barnett Tino Sehgal Newman, or from Gerhard Richter to Tacita Dean—for all 4 June–15 July 2018 of them, investigating nature and its varied perception On view on the Fondation Beyeler grounds is a work by plays a major role. While moving from one room to the Tino Sehgal from the Beyeler Collection. next, we notice that Nature and Abstraction might just as well be called Clouds and Surface or Colour and Light.

On the lower level of the museum, the presentation is supplemented with paintings and an installation by Lucas Arruda, as well as a group of works by Ellsworth Kelly and Alexander Calder. Works by Jenny Holzer, Tino Sehgal, and Ernesto Neto are featured in the garden of the Fondation Beyeler. 1–21 Where this symbol appears on the exhibit labels, you will The exhibition was curated by Theodora Vischer, Senior find the work discussed in detail under the corresponding Curator Fondation Beyeler. number in the guide. In conjunction with the Public Art Project by Ernesto Neto, which the Fondation Beyeler is presenting at the Cover: Brice Marden, Second Window Painting, 1983, Zurich Main Station from 30 June to 29 July 2018, the oil on linen (5 panels), 61 x 229 cm, Daros Collection (detail) © 2018, Daros Collection, Switzerland artist has installed a room at the museum with earlier © 2018, ProLitteris, Zurich works. ROOM 1 ROOM 1

1 2 Piet Mondrian Wassily Kandinsky Eucalyptus, 1912 Improvisation 10, 1910

The Fondation Beyeler owns a group of works by Dutch Improvisation 10 marks the transition from figurative painter Piet Mondrian that reveals key stages in the landscape to abstraction in the oeuvre of Russian development of his pictorial language from the rendering painter Wassily Kandinsky. At first glance, it seems to of nature to abstraction. Mondrian’s Cubist phase, too, be a nonrepresentational colour composition. Upon was an important step on his path to abstraction. In closer inspection, however, we notice on the right a tree Eucalyptus, a broad network of branches and leaves ex- or bush with curved black branches and, at the upper tends across the canvas, encouraging our gaze to linger left, a colourful rainbow that arches over a red-domed on the play of forms on the surface rather than slipping building. The black lines set the rhythm and lend into pictorial depth. the scene a framework allowing the landscape motif to In contrast to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, fall into perspective. Characteristic of the painting whose Cubist paintings generally maintain a distinction are black-edged, ‘glowing’ blocks of colour: in intense between object and background, Mondrian—starting red, yellow, blue, green, and white. The abstract from the real object—aimed at achieving a consistently rendering illustrates Kandinsky’s understanding of art. rhythmized and abstracted picture surface. For him, the outside world was no longer to be depicted naturalistically; instead, it was inner experience that was to be given expression. ROOM 2 ROOM 2

3 4 Max Ernst Joan Miró Fleurs de neige, 1929 Paysage (Paysage au coq), 1927

Max Ernst painted Fleurs de neige while living in Paris, In 1919 the Catalan painter, graphic artist, and sculptor during which time he played a major role in shaping Joan Miró first arrived in Paris, where he developed Surrealism. The picture surface is divided into three a style largely defined by figurative pictographs. There geometric areas in black-green, black, and blue, which he also became a member of the group of Surrealists. can also be read as elements of a simple landscape with Miró’s works are often playful and quirky, as is Paysage two hills and a night-time sky. Employing unusual artistic (Paysage au coq). In the barren landscape an extremely techniques—grattage, frottage, and a painter’s comb— delicately drawn, perspectively tapering, ladder extends Ernst brought wondrous flowers, appearing like crystal- both upward and into the depth of the pictorial space. line phenomena in an imagined cosmos, to life on the It mediates between a desert-like ground zone and the dark hills. Two other motifs complete the composition: blue sky, through which a cloud sails—or is it attached one, in the lower right, is the small picture of a bird to the upper picture edge by nails? family, which Ernst used as a personal emblem and a The landscape depicted here is linked with Miró’s means to identify himself as part of this distant floral memories of Catalonia, and in particular of rural Mont- world; the other is a small blue ball, a solitary element roig del Camp, where he grew up. Notice how sparsely floating in a field of blue—the earth? populated the picture is: a lonesome rooster crows, and a few stones direct the gaze from the foreground towards the back—first to the sharply drawn horizon, then to the hub of the wagon wheel, and finally up to the top of the ladder and to the cloud. ROOM 2 ROOM 3

5 6 Louise Bourgeois Claude Monet Untitled, 1954 Le bassin aux nymphéas, ca. 1917–20

In this untitled work, two wonderous stalks grow directly In the last years of his life, French painter Claude Monet out of the ground. They are assembled from individually dedicated himself, with obsessive passion, to the water painted pieces of plaster and a few out of wood, stacked lily pond in his garden in Giverny—becoming his preferred upon a metal rod. The plaster elements appear like motif from 1899. A gardener arranged the water lilies small stones—also recalling fingers. Or are they petrified daily at a calculated distance from one another. This plants? Between 1945 and 1955, Louise Bourgeois arrangement is reflected in the painting, yet the sight is produced an entire group of such sculptures, which she vexing: do we see only the plants or also their reflections titled Personnages. The French artist had emigrated in the water? Fleeting brushstrokes give shape to water from Paris to New York in 1938, and the sculptures lilies, algae, reeds, and leaves. There is no horizon were a way for her to address the people she had left and no separation between earth and sky. The selected behind and dearly missed. Bourgeois thus attempted to, view, in which bordering vegetation is only suggested as she put it, ‘envision’ these individuals, to ‘recreate by individual, overhanging branches, invites viewers to their presence’. Even if the artist never wanted to join complete the scenery in their imagination. the Surrealists, subconscious and surreal associations The water lily picture in the Beyeler Collection is related nevertheless play an important role in this work. to the multipartite, panorama-like Grandes décorations that Monet painted for the Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris. In the second half of the twentieth century, this painting cycle influenced numerous artists, including Ellsworth Kelly and the painters of Abstract Expressionism. ROOM 3 ROOM 4

7 8 Olafur Eliasson Roni Horn Polar fall fade (orange, turquoise, grey), 2013 Opposites of White, 2006–07 Polar fall fade (light green, yellow, pink), 2013 Polar fall fade (light green, light blue, light red), 2013 Roni Horn’s (b. 1955) work centres on the transfor- mability of people, places, and things whose form and The three glass works by Danish artist Olafur Eliasson natural state are subject to constant change. In her art, (b. 1967) consist of hand-blown panes of differently the American artist aims at making such transformations coloured glass, in roughly the middle of which oval sensorially perceptible. openings have been cut. The colours correspond to the A good example is the two-part sculpture Opposites of spectrum of the basic colours named in the titles. White. The cylindrical elements are cast in glass, each In each piece, three glass sheets are layered one behind weighing around two tons. The outer surfaces of the another, whereby the openings overlap rather imprecisely. sculptures are opaque and reveal variously heavy traces The basic concept draws on watercolour studies in which of the production process. The sculpture’s top circular Eliasson investigated the translucency of the medium. surfaces, however, are completely blemish-free and Transferred into three-dimensional space, the three transparent: like a surface of water on a clear, windless works, associatively titled Polar fall fade, function in a day. Daylight, which determines the colour effect of the similar fashion: due to the transparency and layering glass, transforms the works into a natural phenomenon, of the panes, the scale of the colour combinations and so to speak. The reduced and straightforward form of tones shifts as the light and the beholder’s standpoint the glass sculptures might recall objects of Minimal Art. change. The conditions and manifestations of different In the process of being perceived, however, any sort colour perceptions are central and recurring themes in of objectivity or clarity is lost. What one sees is not Eliasson’s oeuvre. palpable, but evades the deciphering gaze again and again. Is it solid or fluid, bright or dark, insubstantial or heavy, light or material? There is no conclusive answer. ROOM 4

9 Tacita Dean Cúmulo, 2016

During a visit to Los Angeles, British artist Tacita Dean With her art, Dean repeatedly aims at capturing the (b. 1965) developed a particular fascination with observing fleeting quality of things and phenomena in nature, and the sky: ‘What surprised me most about Los Angeles of movement and light. Cúmulo depicts an atmospheric was the one thing I had imagined there would be little landscape of piled cumulus clouds that seem to float of and that was clouds. These clouds differed from their away across the blackboard. Interestingly, faced with the European counterparts because they were nearly never black-and-white cloud spectacle, we don’t miss colour— gray but extremely variable and white; they appeared perhaps thanks to the pronounced wealth of detail? unconnected to rain, as in Europe, but instead to the Using the medium of chalk, the artist succeeds in imperceptible activity of winds high above the earth’s capturing the incessant transformability and volatility of surface. Driving down Sunset Boulevard early on in the sky. Hence, the picture treads a fascinating, fine line my stay, I was confronted by a voluminous atomic cloud between unending variability and wistful timelessness. blooming at the end of the road in front of me, back- dropped by a deep blue sky. This inspired me to take up chalk on a blackboard once again. I have since become a cloud watcher.’

The chalk drawings by Tacita Dean look like cinemato- graphic stills. Since the beginning of her career she has produced—parallel to her outstanding film work and alongside small-format drawings on paper—large, in part monumental, blackboard drawings. ROOM 5 ROOM 5

10 11 Gerhard Richter Gerhard Richter 12 Scheiben (Reihe), 2013 Wolke, 1976

12 Scheiben (Reihe) is one of the many, and most Many of the paintings by Gerhard Richter are based recent, glass works that German artist Gerhard Richter on photographs derived from his Atlas, a collection of (b. 1932) began realizing in 1967. Playing with trans- photos and collages that he compiled over the course parency and reflection, the free-standing glass panes of decades. One example is the oil painting Wolke. Like engage in an exciting dialogue with their surroundings. the original photograph, the painting captures the blue The reflection of the glass panels is enhanced by a fine sky and the constantly changing clouds traipsing by, as coating that simultaneously reduces their transparency well as the fugitive play of sunlight and shadow. The ever so slightly. clouds contrast sculpturally with the deep blue sky and Richter repeatedly investigates the meaning of repro- in a sense form a landscape of their own. The section of ducibility and its obfuscation. He himself describes sky in the photograph, which the artist adopted in the the glass objects as ‘gates to nothing’. Yet they can painting, does not correspond to classical landscape never contain absolute emptiness. The panes multiply painting. It is not a ‘view from a window’ directed towards themselves; they mutually permeate and overlap one a vanishing point or established by a window frame. another. The viewer also becomes a part of the perpetually Instead, in front of this painting, the beholder’s stand- changing and temporarily existing picture space, which point and the distance to the motif remain uncertain. also manifests itself as architectonic space. For Richter, This piece is part of a series of cloud pictures. Typical glass as an artistic medium possesses a symbolic for the artist, this serial manner of working is based value as a sign of the impossibility of knowing. On a on the notion that reality is too complex and diverse to sketch he noted: ‘Glass—Symbol (seeing everything / be comprehended in a single image. comprehending nothing)’. ROOM 6 ROOM 6

Brice Marden 12 Brice Marden The works by Brice Marden (b. 1938) shown in this Moon III, 1977 room are on loan from the Daros Collection, Zurich. Since 1971 Brice Marden has regularly travelled to the The exceptionally clear and seemingly simple paintings Aegean island of Hydra, where his passion for light and by American artist Brice Marden are deeply influenced landscape is continually rekindled. It was also there by his personal interests and fascination with nature, that his enthusiasm for past cultures, especially antiquity, light, and colour. The artist once remarked: ‘I believe had its start. Inspired by the antique painting technique there are highly emotional paintings not to be admired of encaustic, the artist mixed oil paint with bee’s wax for any technical or intellectual reason but to be felt.’ during this period. In their formal language, the paintings, The images exhibited here demonstrate in an exemplary including Moon III, are characterized by their simple manner the subtle development of Marden’s work from pictorial architecture, two-dimensionality, and tactile- the late 1960s to the present. From his reductive seeming texture. The effect of the picture surface—here early pictures dominated by grey tones—including the further enhanced by the use of wax, and in later years painting Long Gulf (1971), which reflects the artist’s by the colourfulness and paint application as well—plays view of the horizon of the Gulf of Mexico—his artistic a central role throughout Marden’s oeuvre. path leads to newer, poetic works and exploration of freer forms, as in The Muses (1991–93), as well as his most recently produced painting, Winsor + Newton, from 2016–17. ROOM 6 ROOM 6

13 Brice Marden manner. The progressive compositional loosening ulti- Second Window Painting, 1983 mately found its zenith in works such as The Muses. Drawings that previously recalled graphic characters are Marden was invited to design new glass panes for the here transformed into flowing and dancing contours on apse of the Basel Minster in 1978. The commission the picture plane—into choreographed lineaments that led him to a new approach of exploring the meaning are perceived not as being figurative, but as dynamic and reproduction of light in his works. The artist spent movements. seven years working on the project, which, although it was never realized, inspired a spiritual engagement with 15 new pictorial solutions and materials. This investigation Brice Marden expanded his formal language noticeably: the five Winsor + Newton, 2016–17 panels of the frieze-like Second Window Painting are no longer rhythmized by verticals and horizontals alone, In one of his most recent works, Winsor + Newton, as previously had been the case in Marden’s oeuvre, which belongs to a series of ten paintings, the artist but also geometrically by diagonal lines. again turns his attention to a quieter composition. Paint, something that has been a central aspect of Marden’s art from the outset, also becomes the subject of the 14 image’s title. Produced with natural earth pigments, the Brice Marden so-called terre verte, the pictures are named after the The Muses, 1991–93 particular manufacturers of the green toned paint. Here, the vibrant glow of the dark green speaks to the Beginning in 1984, the graphic elements in Marden’s artist’s great affinity to nature and his fascination with work, influenced by Far Eastern calligraphic art and light and colour. poetry, gained new importance. Landscape painting, drawing, and writing permeate one another in a subtle ROOM 7 ROOM 8

16 17 Henri Matisse Clyfford Still Océanie, la mer, 1946–47 PH-131, 1951 Océanie, le ciel, 1946–47 In his large-format paintings, American painter Clyfford Starting with Ellsworth Kelly’s sharply carved sculptures Still combined two radical trends in art: colour field like White Ring (1963), it is quite appealing to gaze painting as it was given shape by Barnett Newman, and at Henri Matisse’s screen prints Océanie, la mer and Abstract Expressionism as articulated in Willem de Océanie, le ciel: at the forms dispersed in a gentle Kooning’s pictures. Still did not give his paintings titles. rhythm across the picture surface and at the empty Only later did he label them with a system of consecutive spaces. In preparing his lively and playful composition, numbers that referred to photographs of the works and Matisse cut out birds and leaves, fish, algae, and allowed them to be clearly identified. ornaments from white paper and pinned them directly The painting PH-131 is dominated by an intense blue onto the walls of his home. He later used silkscreen that appears to inundate the canvas, so to speak. A printing to transfer the two works onto canvas. ragged, white stripe of paint divides the blue area and The juxtaposition of these two works reveals how Kelly, further emphasizes the horizontal and vertical dimensions in his handling of form and colour, was influenced by of the work. Along the upper picture edge, a flash of Matisse’s cut-out forms—his so-called papiers découpées. vibrant orange extends the composition into the adjacent The works of both artists consisted of not just clearly space. Presented here is a giant canvas that doesn’t depict bounded, coloured shapes, but also the space between anything representational, but whose monumentality them. Matisse and Kelly were particularly interested and intense colour effect are aimed at overwhelming the in the interplay between fore- and background in their viewer. pictures, whereby the space surrounding the forms is accorded the same importance as the distinctive form itself. As Kelly put it: ‘The negative is just as important as the positive.’ ROOM 8 ROOM 9

18 19 Willem de Kooning Ernesto Neto Untitled XXXI, 1977 Growing out of a profound interest in spirituality, Over several years beginning in 1975, Dutch-American humanism, and ecology, the works of Brazilian artist artist Willem de Kooning turned his attention to pro- Ernesto Neto (b. 1964) often consist of soft, organic ducing a series of paintings in an expressive and almost materials and biomorphic forms. Transparency and completely abstract style. The art critic David Sylvester sensuality also often play a major role in his sculptures: compared de Kooning’s energetic brushstrokes during they can be touched, entered into, traversed, or set into this phase of his oeuvre with the lashes of a whip; motion; in many instances, they even appeal to our yet, in fact, it is the radiant colour commanding the sense of smell. The works thus invite us to concentrate entire picture surface that generates the winding stroke on our own perception and interact with the piece forms. The painting’s intense luminosity is further and its surroundings. unleashed by the thick layer of lead white that the artist applied as a primer to the canvas and sanded until it From 30 June to 29 July 2018, the Fondation Beyeler appeared downright translucent. is showing GaiaMotherTree, a monumental walk-in Sylvester saw ‘macrocosmic landscapes’ in these sculpture by Ernesto Neto at the Zurich Main Station. painterly, light-flooded compositions—scenes that we Discussions of the work, along with lectures, meditations, nonetheless cannot work our way into perspectively, workshops, and music events will take place in the but can instead investigate topographically, as if from a piece’s interior. In conjunction with the Public Art Project, bird’s-eye perspective. the artist has installed a small selection of earlier works in this room. ROOM 20 ROOM 21/22

20 21 Ellsworth Kelly Lucas Arruda Yellow White, 1961 Untitled (from the series Deserto-Modelo), 2015–18 Green Curves, 1997 The small-format paintings by Brazilian artist Lucas In his work, American artist Ellsworth Kelly transcended Arruda (b. 1983) feature atmospheric landscapes. the concept of the right-angled panel painting and Yet they are often identifiable as such due solely to created compositions in which coloured shapes became a suggested distant horizon. The artist is not concerned pictures. They are form-events that loosen themselves with the recognisability of an existing setting, explaining: from the supporting basis of the wall and whose shape, ‘It’s the idea of a landscape rather than a real place.’ colour, and contrast are varied in the most diverse Arruda is interested in the rendering of light and in the manner. materiality and physicality of colour generated by his Kelly’s pictures are not to be seen as abstractions, thick application of paint. Thus, what initially seem because they relate to real objects. Green Curves, for to be classic landscape paintings become almost abstract instance, refers back to a trampled paper cup that the light and colour studies. artist found in his studio. What fascinated him about The paintings featured here are part of an extensive the object was not its ordinariness, but the new, concise group of works entitled Deserto-Modelo. In this surface resulting from the deformation. In Kelly’s oeuvre presentation they are complemented by a projection of we see how his works gradually evolved from ‘paintings’ hand painted slides. The title refers to Brazilian poet into autonomous ‘shapes’. Whereas Yellow White João Cabral de Melo Neto, who engages the subject of presents a bulging yellow form that is still ‘restrained’ the desert (deserto) as a timeless and irrational thought by a bordering picture ground, Kelly’s ‘shapes’ would pattern. In a similar way, Arruda invokes the desert come into their own over the following years. The wall as a metaphysical realm. Hence, modelo in Portuguese and the surrounding space become actively incorporated signifies not just a model but analogously also a project, into the picture—and Kelly’s forms are entirely vision, or even utopia. liberated. INFORMATION CATALOGUE

Room texts: Marlene Bürgi, Julianna Filep, odto eee The Collection Fondation Beyeler Ioana Jimborean, Jana Leiker Fondation Beyeler The Collection Edited by: Ioana Jimborean, Daniel Kramer Translation: Joann Skrypzak-Davidsmeyer Copy editing: Leah LeFort Graphic design: Heinz Hiltbrunner

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It might turn out well, www.fondationbeyeler.ch/news if the sunshine lasts . . . www.facebook.com/FondationBeyeler twitter.com/Fond_Beyeler Fondation Beyeler: The Collection With works and texts by the artists, edited by Theodora Vischer for the Fondation Beyeler Published by Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2017, 284 pages, 183 illustrations, CHF 68,– Further publications on the Beyeler Collection are available at the Art Shop: shop.fondationbeyeler.ch

Upcoming exhibition: BALTHUS The exhibition Beyeler Collection / Nature + Abstraction 2 September 2018–1 January 2019 is generously supported by: FONDATION Beyeler-Stiftung Baselstrasse 101, CH-4125 Riehen / Basel Hansjörg Wyss, Wyss Foundation www.fondationbeyeler.ch BEYELER COLLECTION NATURE + ABSTRACTION

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