A Century of Sculpture : the Nasher Collection
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A CENTURY OF SCULPTURE COLLECTION A CENTURY OF SCULPTURE Selected by Carmen Gimenez and Steven A. Nash. THE NASHER With an interview between Raymond Nasher and Steven Nash as well as an essay by Michael Brenson. COLLECTION The Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection is renowned as one of the finest collections of Modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. Remarkable for its uniformly high level of quality as well as the depth of its representation of key artists, the collection spans more than a century, from the pioneering work of Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, and Medardo Rosso late in the nineteenth century to contemporary developments reflected in works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tony Cragg, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Serra, among others. The Nashers began to collect earnestly in the early 1960s, and while they acquired significant holdings of contemporary paintings and prints, pre-Columbian art, and Guatemalan textiles, sculpture became a primary passion. Although Patsy Nasher passed away in 1988, Raymond Nasher continues to expand the collection, with an eye toward rounding it out historically and adding work by exciting young artists. Lavishly illustrated in this volume are 136 works by fifty-eight artists, a selection that surveys many of the most important sculptural developments of the past one hundred years. In no other historical period have above: Auguste Rodin, The Age of Bronze, the definitions of sculpture been so dramatically ca. 1876 challenged and expanded. The Nasher Collection is a front cover, clockwise from left: celebration of the creative energies behind this Julio Gonzalez, Woman with a Mirror, Modernist tradition. Particularly notable is the ca. 1936-37, cast ca. 1980; Pablo Picasso, presentation in depth of such masters as Alexander Head of a Woman, 193 1, cast 1973; Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Alberto Alexander Calder, Mobile, 1958; Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss, 1907-08, and David Smith; groupings of multiple works allow a cast before 19 14 broad picture of each artist's achievement. A CENTURY OF SCULPTURE THE NASHER COLLECTION Curated by CARMEN GIMENEZ STEVEN A. NASH GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM FINE ARTS MUSEUMS OF SAN FRANCISCO MASTERWORKS OF MODERN SCULPTURE: THE NASHER COLLECTION Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco California Palace of the Legion of Honor October 1996-January 1997 A CENTURY OF SCULPTURE: THE NASHER COLLECTION Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York February-April 1997 This exhibition is co-organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Generous support for the exhibition in San Francisco has been provided by Mr. and Mrs. Robert McNeil, Bobbie and Mike Wilsey, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Joost, and McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, LLP. Some of the works in the exhibition are owned by The Nasher Foundation. CATALOGUE Designed by Juan Ariho Assisted by Marta Elorriaga © 1996 The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. All rights reserved. Michael Brenson's essay © 1996 Michael Brenson. isbn 0-8109-6898-3 (hardcover) isbn 0-89207-178-8 (softcover) Printed in Italy by Arnoldo Mondadori Editore S.p.A. Guggenheim Museum Publications 107 1 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10128 Hardcover edition distributed by Harry N. Abrams, Inc. 100 Fifth Avenue New York, New York 10011 PHOTO CREDITS All photographs by David Heald except the following: pp. 18, 22, 30, 31: courtesy of Raymond Nasher; p. 79: Joseph McDonald; pp. 109, 155, 205, 259: Robert Newcombe, © The Nelson Gallery Foundation; pp. 175, 262-63: Tom Jenkins; p. 181: Larry Bercow; p. 189: Rafael Lobato; pp. 207, 209, 223, 277, 290-91, 295, 303, 309: Lee Clockman; p. 271: Nic Tenwiggenhorn, courtesy of Oil & Steel Gallery; p. 293: Prudence Cuming Associates Ltd., courtesy of Waddington Galleries; p. 313: Douglas M. Parker Studio, courtesy of the artist; pp. 314-15: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. PREFACE. THOMAS KRENS AND HARRY S. PARKER III It is not hyperbole to state that the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection represents the finest assemblage of Modern sculpture in private hands anywhere in the world. Since its beginnings in the mid-1960s with the purchase of works by Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, and Henry Moore, the collection has grown steadily not only in size but also in quality and depth of historical representation. It now is without peer. For Raymond Nasher and his wife, Patsy, the collection was a shared passion involving countless hours of research, travel, discussion with artists and others in the art world, and the creative pleasure of the installation of works in and around their home in Dallas. Paramount to their collecting interests was the joy of living with the sculptures on a daily basis. As Patsy Nasher once expressed it, "The works acquired us; we didn't acquire them." Following Mrs. Nasher's death in 1988, Raymond Nasher continued to build the collection with acquisitions that both extended its reach into contemporary art and rounded out its historical coverage. It now numbers more than three hundred works. From Paul Gauguin and Auguste Rodin to such contemporary artists as Magdalena Abakanowicz and Richard Serra. the Nasher Collection highlights many of the artists and different stylistic languages that have marked so strongly the visual and intellectual adventure of avant-garde sculpture over the past century. The collection was not put together, however, as an exercise in art history. It reveals very clearly the personal tastes and enthusiasms of the individuals who shaped it. Most notable in this regard is the representation of certain key artists in great depth: Alberto Giacometti, Raymond Duchamp- Villon, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and David Smith, among others, are represented with multiple works, tracing different thematic concerns and periods of development. Also unique to the philosophy behind the collection is the ongoing commitment to share the collection with as broad a public as possible through exhibitions and loans and also installations in different public spaces, from museums to commercial and government settings. As Raymond Nasher explains in the interview published in this volume, this dedication to sharing goes hand in hand with the notion that art can make a major difference in people's daily lives. It is an honor and a pleasure to be able to present selections from this fine collection to museum audiences in New York and San Francisco. From the outset, the exhibition has been a joint project between the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Our respective curators-in-charge are Carmen Gimenez, Curator of Twentieth- Century Art, and Steven Nash, Associate Director and Chief Curator. They have been assisted in the planning and presentation of the exhibition by extremely able teams at both museums, individually thanked in the accompanying acknowledgments. We are also pleased to acknowledge Michael Brenson, independent critic and curator, for his perceptive essay. Financial support for the project in San Francisco came from the following sponsors: Mr. and Mrs. Robert McNeil, Bobbie and Mike Wilsey, Mr. and Mrs. Peter Joost, and McCutchen, Doyle, Brown & Enersen, LLR Most important, we wish to thank Raymond Nasher for his generosity in allowing us to present these masterworks of Modern sculpture, and for his support of the exhibition in so many different ways. We know that the public will share our enthusiastic appreciation of the Nasher Collection. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. CARMEN GIMENEZ AND STEVEN A. NASH Sculpture exhibitions, due to the nature of the medium, are generally more complicated to organize than shows of two-dimensional objects. Photographing sculpture is more difficult, issues of crating, transportation, and mounting are considerably more complex, conservation always involves challenges, and the spatial dynamics of installations that must be plotted months in advance of the actual exhibition test a curator's creativity and powers of foresight. All of these concerns translate into higher than average costs, with the result that funding becomes an ever-present issue. Moreover, sculpture tends to be an art form less well known to general audiences than painting and perhaps more difficult to fully comprehend, making presentation and educational approaches all the more critical. Despite such inherent difficulties, the organization of this exhibition has been a true pleasure, thanks to the phenomenal depth and quality of the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection and the encouragement and constant support provided by Raymond Nasher. Due to the extensiveness of the collection's holdings of Modern sculpture, which now number well in excess of three hundred works, problems of determining what would not be on the loan list exceeded those of what would be there. The need for reasons of space to limit ourselves in terms of numbers of works and to eliminate from consideration some of the largest and most powerful sculptures in the collection made for painful choices. Discussions between Mr. Nasher and ourselves and the analyses of individual works, which benefited also from the insights of guest essayist Michael Brenson, were an ongoing source of intellectual stimulation. For all that he meant to the project, we owe Raymond Nasher an especially profound debt of thanks. The directors of our respective museums, Thomas Krens at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Harry S. Parker III at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, also played key roles on the organizational team. Both know the Nasher Collection well, recognized the exciting potentials for a museum exhibition, and worked diligently through the logistical planning. We greatly appreciate their support and facilitating vision. Given the many complications involved in the project, it could not have been realized so successfully without the dedicated involvement of a great many other individuals. In Dallas, several of Mr. Nasher's staff members devoted endless hours to organizational details.