Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud
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January-March 2016 Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud 1 Director's Welcome Reading Women: Rebecca Solnit in Dear Friends, Conversation with Carrie Schneider Portraits tell stories. Some reflect Free with MFA admission how important people want to be Sunday, January 17, 3 p.m. remembered. Others record people as Final Day of Carrie Schneider: Reading Women they were. Sponsored by: Artists have a way of challenging conventions and expectations, of bringing their own insights into play. Of course, we often create our own stories while standing in front of a portrait. Just listen to students in our galleries, some as young as four-years- old. They let their imaginations take flight, something we Carrie Schneider (born in 1979) earned her BFA from Carnegie adults can do, as well. Mellon University in Pittsburgh and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now lives in New York. She has Our Museum is fortunate to have a wide variety of had solo shows at the Museum of exceptional portraits – from Robert Henri’s masterful Contemporary Art Chicago and the Village Girl – Lily Cow to Élizabeth Louise Vigée-Lebrun’s Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh. She portrait of her daughter Julie to Philip Pearlstein’s sensitive has participated in group exhibitions painting of his favorite model Kilolo Kumanyika. Now we and screenings at the 2011 Pittsburgh are presenting our most expansive exhibition of portraits Biennial at The Andy Warhol to date. Museum, The Kitchen in New York, and the Haggerty Museum of Art at Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches Marquette University in Milwaukee. from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud features 152 rare Her work is in the collections of the portrait drawings and oil sketches from the late eighteenth Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum Photo by Paul Germanos into the twenty-first century. They are drawn from the of Contemporary Photography fascinating collection of noted curator and collector at Columbia College in Chicago, and the Centre Canadien Robert Flynn Johnson. He did not aim for a chronological d’Architecture in Montreal. overview, selecting instead works which interested or moved him. His is a highly personal collection, which has Based in San Francisco, Rebecca Solnit is the author of 17 books many gems and just as many surprises. about art, community, the environment, geography, and politics, as well as numerous essays in anthologies and exhibition catalogues. Robb and Susan Hough have also developed a personal Her books include: Hope in the Dark: collection – of guitars – which has inspired us to offer our Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities; first exhibition of musical instruments. The classical guitar The Faraway Nearby; A Paradise as we know it today was developed by talented Spanish Built in Hell: The Extraordinary luthiers at the end of the nineteenth century. Communities that Arise in Disaster; A Field Guide to Getting Lost; Wanderlust: Major museums have important instruments in their A History of Walking; and River of collection, because, like portraits, they help tell the story Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and of civilization. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New the Technological Wild West. She York, for example, has the 1937 Hauser guitar which the received the National Book Critics legendary Andrés Segovia made famous; we will display Circle Award in criticism and the Photo by Jude Mooney Photography its twin. The MFA Guitar Festival will accompany the Lannan Literary Award for River of exhibition, presenting five concerts by internationally Shadows. She is the first woman to regularly write the Easy Chair acclaimed musicians and a lecture by a respected guitar- column for Harper’s and is a frequent contributor to the political maker/restorer. We are deeply grateful to Robb and site www.tomdispatch.com. She holds her BA from San Francisco Susan for sharing their exceptional collection with the State University and her MA in journalism from the University of community. California, Berkeley. We have many other exhibitions and programs, as we Ms. Schneider’s Kim reading Rebecca Solnit (A Field Guide to Getting begin a new year. Art in Bloom 2016, presented by The Lost, 2005) is part of the Reading Women video and exhibition. Margaret Acheson Stuart Society and the MFA, will fill the galleries with gorgeous flowers in the spring, and the popular Beer Project returns. Please join us for a banner season as we begin our 51st year of public service. Sincerely, On the cover: Vanni Rossi (Italian, 1894-1973) Self-Portrait Smoking (1920) Oil on canvas Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson MFA Photos: Thomas U. Gessler 2 Members’ Opening Reception Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud and The Art of the Classical Guitar CURRENT | UPCOMING | EXHIBITIONS Friday, February 12, 7-9 p.m. Contemplating Character: Cash Bar, Lite Bites Portrait Drawings & Oil Complimentary Valet Parking at the Bayshore Drive entrance Sketches from Jacques-Louis Please RSVP: www.fine-arts.org/rsvp David to Lucian Freud or 727.896.2667, ext. 210. in their grandeur, helplessness, pride, and vulnerability. Every Hazel Hough Wing drawing in this exhibition has moved me deeply in some way, and Saturday, February 13-Sunday, May 29 it is both my conviction and hope that individuals who view this exhibition will make a similar connection and feel the presence of Portraits have captivated humanity throughout time. Just think of the personalities represented who have been drawn and painted the many images of people from around the world and over the over the last two centuries.” centuries that can be seen in the Museum’s galleries. In addition to David and Freud, Mr. Johnson has selected such Lucian Freud, one of our time’s most provocative portrait painters and significant artists as Théodore Rousseau, Edgar Degas, Édouard the grandson of the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, once Vuillard, Pierre Bonnard, Elie Nadelman, Frank Stella, and George noted: “I’ve always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is Bellows, to name a few. Four drawings are by Adolf von Menzel, why I paint people. It’s people who have brought drama to pictures whose name may be unfamiliar to many Americans. He was one of from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.” Germany’s most admired artists working in the nineteenth century. Degas called him “the greatest living master.” Contemplating Character: Portrait Drawings & Oil Sketches from Jacques-Louis David to Lucian Freud is the most expansive exhibition In an expressive drawing, Menzel treats his right hand as a portrait, of portraits ever presented at the MFA. It spotlights 152 rare portrait which he drew with his left. Maximilien Luce, imprisoned for his drawings and oil sketches from the late eighteenth into the twenty- anarchist political views, depicts his hand pressing against the wall first century, with most from the nineteenth. Artists from 15 of Mazas Prison. Brassaï focuses on The Hands of Matilda, Paris 5 countries are April 1949. All challenge our conception of the portrait. So, too, do represented, Henry-Bonaventure Monnier’s watercolor, Self-Portrait Dressed as with a large a Woman (1869), Aubrey Vincent Beardsley’s fanciful caricature of number presumably the writer Oscar Wilde (1892), and Charles Henry Sims’ from modernistic Self-Portrait in Distress (about 1928). France and England. Not surprising for a curator, Mr. Johnson was drawn to artist self-portraits and portraits of artists. One of the former is by Dora The works Maar, a talented artist who shared a decade with Pablo Picasso. She are drawn sliced her self-portrait in two, a strong visual suggesting mental from the turmoil. Another is Alfred Hitchcock’s unmistakable Self-Portrait remarkable Profile (around 1960), which introduced his popular TV series Alfred collection Hitchcock Presents to millions of Americans. of Robert Flynn There are two portraits of Jacques-Louis David, one while he was in Johnson, prison. A supporter of the French Revolution, David was imprisoned Curator after the fall of Robespierre and later found favor with Napoleon. Emeritus, There are others of the English Romantic poet-artist William Blake, Achenbach American author Washington Irving, influential British critic- Foundation artist John Ruskin, French symbolist Odilon Redon, and the great for Graphic American realist Thomas Eakins in silhouette. Arts, Fine Arts The exhibition has many other gems, including a miniature portrait Museums of George Washington (around 1795) by an anonymous artist and of San Bonnard’s Crying Woman (about 1890-1895), created in a flowing, Francisco. seemingly spontaneous line. There are even drawings (one of a Devil He has Woman) by the American cartoonist Robert Crumb, who developed a written: cult following for his countercultural comic books like Weirdo. “I am fervently A host of works capture family members, friends, and lovers in drawn to tender moments, and a number resonate with paintings in the the vast Museum’s collection. Contemplating Character was organized by variety of Martha Miller (American, born 1954) Mr. Johnson with Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, depictions The Artist’s Daughters (1987) California, in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Pastel on paper Hollywood, California. of human Collection of Robert Flynn Johnson beings ©Martha Miller 3 50 Artworks for The works encompass all media and range in date from antiquity to the present day. Large numbers of photographs and prints have 50 Years: been added, as well as choice paintings, contemporary sculpture, decorative arts, and more. The MFA’s comprehensive collection of Second Look world art now numbers approximately 20,000 works – for the most Saturday, January 9 - part due to a legion of loyal donors and friends. Sunday, March 13 For our 50th anniversary, the MFA initiated this project to secure 50 works for the collection.