Barton Gallery Docent Guide Update March 2013

Museum of Art and Archaeology University of Missouri-Columbia

Jessie Beard Rickly (American, 1895-1975) Red Shoes Fantasy, ca. 1932–35 Oil on Masonite 2011.24 Gift of Associates

Jessie Rickly was born in Poplar Bluff, Missouri and educated at Harvard and at Washington University School of Fine Arts in St. Louis. Further training came from Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Upon returning to St. Louis, which she made her permanent home, she also studied with Oscar Berninghaus and Edmund Wuerpel. In 1934 she and fellow St. Louis artist Aimee Shweig co-founded an artist colony in the southeast Missouri town of Ste. Genevieve. Rickly spent three summers there working in the company of such artists as Joe Jones, Joseph Vorst and Thomas Hart Benton, among others. Independent, spirited, and politically active, Rickly became an artistic voice for women in the 1930s as she battled against then-prevailing gender expectations.

This painting, depicting the interior of a bedroom, was most likely painted in Ste. Genevieve at some point between the period when Rickly helped to found the artist colony and when she left three years later. A reworking of Van Gogh’s famous painting Bedroom in Arles (a version of which she could have easily seen at the Art Institute of beginning in 1926), Rickly’s variation hints at the bohemian ambiance of a colony formed of artists who had traveled and studied around the world. The exotic locales of the American Southwest or Mexico may be implied in the colorful coverlet, and Old World Europe is recalled in the sgabello or Italian side chair. The altar containing a sculpture of the Madonna at the head of the bed reflects the deep spirituality of many of Ste. Genevieve’s Catholic residents.

Although entitled Red Shoes Fantasy, the artist gives us no clues as to the meaning of the painting. The presence of the bright red shoes on the floor and the guitar on the bed remain enigmas. Viewers are left to contemplate and question the subject of the painting for themselves.

Robert MacDonald Graham Jr. (American, 1919–2003) Foundation for a Building [Research Hospital, Kansas City], 1959 Oil on board (2012.2) Gift of Museum Associates

Robert MacDonald Graham Jr. studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1937 until 1941 and became one of Thomas Hart Benton’s favorite pupils. When showing in at the age of 20, the critics praised his use of a glowing light.

While his early works of art show the clear influence of Benton, Graham’s later paintings veered away from his teacher’s Regionalist style and moved into a more abstract mode. His training under Benton influenced Graham’s choice of subject matter in this work, but his painterly style conveys his individuality as an artist. The supernatural and flickering light that suffuses this painting, a common element in Graham’s work, suggests a melancholy mood brought on by the modernization and industrialization of mid-twentieth century Kansas City. Dark shadows and an overcast sky exacerbate the anonymity of the faceless workers. The repetition of stiff angular lines adds dynamism reminiscent of European Modernist movements like Cubism and Futurism. Cyclops (British, b. 1975) Hallelujah, 2007 Acrylic and ink on canvas (2008.3) Gilbreath-McLorn Museum Fund

Born in Manchester, England, Cyclops (aka Lucas Price) is currently studying for his Fine Arts Masters degree at the Royal College of Art in Battersea. He has a studio in Bristol and often collaborates with other street artists in London. He began exploring graffiti when he was thirteen. Not long after, he was suspended from school, when his teachers saw that the drawings in his exercise books corresponded to his "rooftop hit," which the school promptly eliminated by sandblasting.

Hallelujah is an example of Urban art, which is intricately related to city life and architecture. Also referred to as street art and graffiti, Urban art developed on the streets. It is a democratic form of popular art often filled with rebellious undertones. Urban art frequently questions the status quo and the past in a contemporary language. While often considered a nuisance, Urban art has now become a mainstay inside and galleries as artists transpose their paintings from the sides of buildings to canvas.

The painting depicts the face of an idealized young woman overlaid with outlines, shapes, and graffiti recalling the forms found in modern city street life. The title Hallelujah is a religious utterance used in worship and also an expression of rejoicing, which means “God be praised.” With a series of crosses around her neck, the figure is meant to recall an important Christian female. If the forms piled on her head are understood as a type of modern crown, the woman can be interpreted as a royal figure. Indeed, the majestic serenity of this extraordinary figure links her to the glorious Madonnas painted by Jan van Eyck more than five hundred years ago. In this modern reinterpretation of a centuries-old Christian figure, the religious significance is almost completely obscured by the chaos of modern life.

Duilio Barnabé (Italian, 1914 – 1961) La Serveuse, ca. 1959-61 Oil on canvas 86.66 Gift of Mr. and Mrs. George Schriever

Barnabé’s emphasis on pure and universal forms is evident in La Serveuse, with its simplified masses and planes emphasizing features shared by all individuals rather than unique to one. Instead, Barnabé uses understated blocks of color to depict clothing or uniforms, and careful depiction of hands rather than faces, to define subjects through their social roles and what they do rather than their identity as individuals.

His works, whose figures often have no facial features but are instead a sphere sharply divided between light and shadow, evoke the existentialist isolation of individuals in postwar , where Barnabé lived and worked during an intense fifteen year period of creative achievement from the end of the Second World War until his death in 1961. Although Barnabé did not associate himself with any particular artistic movement, his aesthetic choices relate to the Cubists and reflect the deep influence of Picasso.

While this canvas is undated, the treatment of the eyes is distinctive, and similar to dated canvases from the last two years of Barnabé’s life. Ed Paschke (American, 1939-2004) Kiss I, 1996 Oil on linen (97.17) Gilbreath-McLorn Museum Fund

Ed Paschke studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1960s, where he was influenced by Pop Art and by the works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists such as Paul Gauguin, and Pablo Picasso. His paintings contain imagery from the popular culture and explore themes of aggression and physical incongruity in modern life. Paschke often used lurid neon color combinations as part of his anti-aesthetic approach.

In the 1980s, Paschke incorporated electronic media into the creation of many of his works. The use of computer-generated images allowed him to explore technology’s impact on human life. He wrote: “Increased worldwide connections through cyberspace and international multiculturalism have improved communication and enhanced our lives on many levels. It is ironic that these same factors have increased our sense of isolation and detachment. . . . My paintings explore these issues through metaphor and the juxtaposition of symbols.”

Kiss I exemplifies Paschke’s style and subject matter. Disembodied heads appear in many of his paintings, signifying the relationships and voids that exist between individuals in the modern world. Paschke’s use of patterning and bright colors calls to mind imagery from the internet and the mass media, while the repetition of motifs forces us to question the nature of individuality. (MAA 12/04) Irving Kriesberg (American, b. 1919) Oh, Joy! (Tokyo), 1985 Oil on canvas, 2007.36 Anonymous Gift

Kriesberg has been a figurative expressionist painter since the early 1950s, when he fell under the influence of the abstract expressionists in New York City. In 1952 he showed with Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still in an important exhibition of fifteen American artists at the . The gestural paint handling of artists like Franz Kline, in particular, had a lasting effect on his art.

Featuring the odd combination of a gorilla and an owl, Kriesberg paints them in a cartoonish fashion, using Fauvist bright colors and expressive brushwork. The gorilla’s massive head on the right of the composition floats disembodied from his hand, which supports the gigantic owl in front of him. While the claws and outspread wings of the owl appear intimidating, the gorilla shows no fear, putting his head right next to the agitated bird.

The disturbing effect of the large shapes, bizarre pairing, and frenzy of color and strokes appear to have been born from the artist’s unconscious. At the same time, the composition is a childlike and intimate vision created from a rainbow of colors meant to delight. There is an innocent appreciation for nature in all of its forms. (MAA nd) Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941) Lime Persian Single with Vermilion Lip Wrap, 1993 Glass (94.1) Gift of Museum Associates, Members’ Choice

Dale Chihuly studied sculpture and interior design at the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He also learned glassblowing techniques in Murano, Italy, an important international center of glass production. The popularity of Chihuly’s work has helped to blur the lines between fine art and craft. His works are celebrated for their vibrant color, fluid shapes, and the fragility of their blown glass forms.

In his studio in Seattle, Chihuly draws or paints a sketch of each work, then (with the help of his assistants), blows molten glass into shapes to match his original drawings. Lime Persian Single with Vermilion Lip Wrap is part of Chihuly’s Persian series, which consists of glass sculptures that are smaller and more intensely decorated than the artist’s earlier works. (MAA 7/04)

Adja Yunkers (American, 1900-1987) Aegean V, 1967 Acrylic and collage on canvas (78.229) Gift of Mr. W. James Lopp II

Adja Yunkers’ Aegean V is an example of Minimalism, a style popular in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Artists working in this style often painted large canvases with simple fields of color and concentrated on formalist relationships between colors, lines, shapes and textures.

Born in , Latvia, Yunkers began his artistic training at the Art Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia, where he was influenced by the Russian Constructivists Malevich and Lissitzky. After the Russian Revolution made it impossible for him to continue his studies in St. Petersburg, Yunkers found his way to Dresden, where he maintained a studio in the early 1920s. His time in Germany was marked by frequent travel, and many of his paintings are based on his experiences around the world. In 1947, shortly after his studio, most of his works, and all of his possessions burned in a devastating fire, Yunkers immigrated to the .

Yunkers’ Aegean series was made after a trip to Greece and was inspired by the bright blues and whites of the Mediterranean landscape. The series consists of eight works, both prints and paintings. The white-on-white collage of this canvas interacts playfully with the band of blue pigment, subtly drawing attention to the intricacies of the outline. (MAA 8/03)

Frederic Karoly (Hungarian, 1898–1987) Concerto Grosso Fugue by Bloch– Interpretation, 1959 Acrylic on canvas (65.332) Gift of Mr. Morton D. May

This work of art is an example of stain painting, in which very thin paints are poured directly on unprimed canvas. Also known as Post-Painterly Abstraction, the technique was popular in the 1950s. Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis were a few of its most notable practitioners. Karoly was a member of a group of painters based in Washington, DC, known as the Washington Color Painters. Members of this group responded to through non-gestural, abstract paintings that considered the optical effects resulting from the juxtaposition of different colors.

The title of the painting directly references a musical composition penned in 1925 by the celebrated American composer Ernest Bloch (1880–1959). This musical piece is notable for the fusion of a modern harmonic language with mid-eighteenth-century classical techniques. The sweeping and saturated veils of paint on the canvas provide an interesting visual parallel to the forceful chords and rich texture of Bloch’s music. Simon Dinnerstein (American, b. 1943) The Sink, 1974 Oil on board 77.6 Gift of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, through the Childe Hassam Fund

Simon Dinnerstein studied at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School with David Levine and Louis Grebenak. In 1970 he received a Fulbright Fellowship for study at the Hochschule für Bildende Kunst in Kassel, Germany, and in 1977 he won the Prix de Rome Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome. He has exhibited widely in the United States and has had many one-man exhibitions. His works are in numerous private and public collections including the National Academy of Design in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. He continues to live and create art in his native New York.

In The Sink Dinnerstein gives the viewer a look into the private world of his art studio––the clean-up area with its slop sink in all its messy glory. Dinnersteins’s realism is made manifest by his superb draftsmanship, his attention to detail, and his convincing perspective. Using brushes and a palette knife, the textural effects Dinnerstein achieved in his application of paint invite close examination. In some areas, such as the faucet, the soap dish, and the nails of the hinged cabinet doors, paint has been so thickly applied that these objects almost appear sculpted in low relief. The lines of perspective along the curling linoleum mat and the paint-spattered mirror impart a believable three-dimensionality to the otherwise flat picture plane––all in manner that makes this painting a life-sized tromp l-oeil (“fool the eye”) creation. One can almost imagine stepping through the doorway and into the small closet-like space. And upon really close inspection, one can see that the artist actually “autographed” the walls that surround the doorway with his own fingerprints.

Robert Natkin (American, b. 1930)

Beyond the Sapphire and Sound, 1963 Oil on Canvas (63.34) Gift of Mr. David Dolnick

Born in Chicago, Robert Natkin traveled to New York City in the 1950s, where he moved in the same circles as the Abstract Expressionists Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. While he claimed that he was more inspired by the color and lyricism of European modernists, such as Paul Klee, Emil Bonnard and Henri Matisse, Natkin adopted many of the intuitive working methods of his American contemporaries. His non-representational paintings are characterized by layers of texture and vibrant color. In 1991, Natkin compared his improvisational working methods to those of a jazz singer. “I feel like a scat artist,” he said, as he described his work on a monumental abstract mural for the lobby of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Natkin is intrigued by the formal qualities of textiles, and he remembers a childhood dream in which he found himself enveloped in the weave of a Persian rug. His artworks often incorporate fabric patterns into their designs, and the artist sometimes presses rags, clothing and paper towels into the painted surfaces of his pictures. In Beyond the Sapphire and Sound, dots, cross-hatched lines, and layers of mesh patterns create a textile-like design infused with light and color. (MAA 1/06)

Larry Young (American, b. 1943)

Venus, 1993 Bronze 95.2 Gift of Museum Associates

A former Olympic medalist in race walking, Larry Young now works as a sculptor in Columbia, Missouri. After service in the U.S. Navy, he studied art locally at Columbia College. He received training in bronze casting at several foundries in Italy, and he now casts all of his sculptures himself in his own studio. Graceful fluid forms with highly-polished and subtly-colored patinated surfaces are characteristics of his works. His compositions are primarily abstract. Young's works are held in private collections and are installed in public spaces throughout the United States.

Some of Young's sculptures reinterpret classical works and themes. Venus is based on the ancient marble sculpture Venus de Milo, a Hellenistic statue of the goddess Aphrodite of ca. 150 BCE now housed in the Louvre in Paris. The interplay between angular shapes and flowing forms in this sculpture suggest a human figure and convey the beauty of the mythological goddess of love without portraying her naturalistically.