ARTIST ROOMS VIJA CELMINS RESOURCE PACK ABOUT THIS RESOURCE CONTENTS

Vija Celmins is one of the most widely acclaimed What is ARTIST ROOMS? 03 artists working today, with a career spanning six decades from the early 1960s. The ARTIST ROOMS Vija Celmins 04 collection currently holds thirty-four works on paper by Celmins dating from 1974 until 2010. It includes 1. FOUND IMAGES 06 unique graphite, charcoal and eraser drawings such as Untitled (Galaxy-Desert) 1974 and Web #1 1999, 2. NATURAL WORLD 09 as well as prints which employ intaglio, lithographic and relief processes. 3. IMAGE AND SCALE 11 The ARTIST ROOMS collection of works by Vija Celmins is one of the largest museum collections in 4. PROCESS AND MATERIALS 13 the world. Other significant works are held in the USA by LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of 5. MEMORY 15 ), MoMA (the Museum of , New York), the Whitney Museum (New York), SFMoMA (San 6. TIME 17 Francisco ), MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) and Modern Art Summary 20 Museum of Fort Worth, Texas. Further reading 21 This resource is designed to aid teachers and students using the ARTIST ROOMS Vija Celmins collection. Glossary 22 The resource focuses on specific works and themes and suggests areas of discussion, activities and links to other artists in the collection.

For schools, the work of Vija Celmins presents a good opportunity to explore cross-curricula learning. The themes in Celmins work can be linked to curricula areas such as English, expressive , health and wellbeing, social studies, citizenship and science.

A glossary at the back of the resource provides further information on key words, terms and people associated with Celmins and related themes.

Cover image: Vija Celmins House #2 1965 WHAT IS ARTIST ROOMS?

ARTIST ROOMS is a collection of international contemporary art, which has been created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift was made by Anthony d’Offay, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments in 2008.

ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned and managed by Tate and National Galleries of Scotland on behalf of the nation and comprises over 1100 artworks. The collection takes the form of major bodies of work by artists including , , Ed Ruscha and . The guiding concept of ARTIST ROOMS is to show the work of individual artists in dedicated, monographic displays.

Anthony d’Offay’s vision for ARTIST ROOMS is that great works of art should be available to audiences anywhere in the country, and especially for young people. This idea developed from Anthony’s own discovery of art as a child in Leicester and as a student at Edinburgh University, experiences which shaped his life.

The collection is available to regional galleries and museums (“Associates”) throughout the UK, providing an unprecedented resource with a particular focus on inspiring young audiences.

All works: © Vija Celmins ARTIST ROOMS National Galleries of Scotland and Tate. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008. Except: Alliance 1983 ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Presented by the artist 2010 House #2 1965 Private Collection Photography: courtesy Skarstedt Gallery

Produced by Christopher Ganley Designed by ur studio Special thanks to Vija Celmins, Anne Seymour, Anthony d’Offay, Marie-Louise Laband and Amy Dickson

03 VIJA CELMINS

Vija Celmins was born in Riga, The photographs, found in books and Over a five year period, from 1977 In the early 1990s Celmins began to in 1938. Her family fled to the Stuttgart magazines, included a number of violent until 1982, Celmins worked on a series incorporate the spider’s web into her region in the west of Germany in 1944 images such as warplanes, burning of sculpture entitled To Fix the Image work and in 1992 she had a major before eventually leaving Germany for houses, guns and riots. These works are in Memory. These sculptures combine retrospective organised by Philadelphia’s the USA in 1948. After a short time in often associated with her childhood in found stones and bronze casts of them, Institute of Contemporary Art, which New York they settled in , Latvia and Germany during the Second which have been painted in acrylic travelled to Los Angeles, New York Indiana. Celmins studied World War1 and were produced during to appear identical to the original, and Seattle. Celmins has continued her at the John Herron School of Art in the height of the Vietnam War.2 In the prompting the viewer to consider the serial exploration of natural forms to the Indianapolis between 1955 and 1962. mid-1960s and early 1970s Celmins nature of reality. present day through a variety of media During this period she regularly visited also made a number of sculptures of including oil paint, charcoal, pencil In 1979 Celmins had her first New York to see the work of the everyday objects such as Pencil 1968– drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. retrospective exhibition Vija Celmins: Abstract Expressionists such as Willem 70 and Comb 1969–70 (LACMA, Los A Survey Exhibition, originating at the Celmins’ other major solo exhibitions de Kooning. Angeles County Museum of Art). Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport include Vija Celmins at the Fondation In 1961 she received a Fellowship to In 1968 Celmins dropped painting Beach, which later travelled to Chicago, Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris Summer Session where for drawing and began working from New York and Washington. In 1980 1995; The Prints of Vija Celmins at she met a strong community of students pictures of the ocean, a motif she Celmins first collaborated with Gemini The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and artists including and would return to throughout her career. G.E.L. – an artists printmaking and New York 2002; Vija Celmins: Television . She then attended UCLA At around the same time she began to sculpture workshop in Los Angeles – and Disaster, 1964–68, at the Menil (University of California, Los Angeles) use photographs of deserts and skies where she later did a series of intaglio Collection, Houston 2010; Desert, Sea, where she explored a variety of styles. as her subject matter. In 1973 she had prints including Constellation Uccello, and Stars at Museum Ludwig, Cologne After graduating from UCLA she found an exhibition of her ocean drawings at Concentric Bearings and Alliance. 2011 and Vija Celmins; Double Reality inspiration in the everyday objects in her the Whitney Museum of Modern Art, That same year she received a at The Latvian National Art Museum, studio – including a hot plate, a desk New York and the following year began Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1981 Riga, 2014. lamp, a fan, and a heater – painting to incorporate the diptych format into she relocated to New York, where them with minimal colour, using tonal her work. In drawings such as Untitled she continues to live and work. gradations of grey. (Galaxy-Desert) 1974 she brought together the desert landscape and the In 1966 Celmins had her first solo night sky. These drawings associated exhibition at the David Stuart Galleries, two images of nature on different scales Los Angeles. The exhibition included her and taken from different points of view. first based on photographs.

[1] See Jonas Storvse, ‘Going from One Place to Another’ in Vija Celmins: Dessins = Drawings, exhibition catalogue, , Paris 2006, p.20. Celmins is quoted as saying: ‘I began dealing with some images out of my childhood’. [2] Celmins herself would participate in one of the earliest mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the ‘Artists Tower of Protest’ erected in Los Angeles in 1966.

04 05 FOUND IMAGES Discussion Think about whether the object has any significance for you and if that matters. Read the following quote from Vija Think about how you might alter the I’M NOT A VERY CONFESSIONAL ARTIST, YOU KNOW. I DON’T EVER REVEAL Celmins and discuss in relation to her WHAT I’M FEELING IN MY WORK, OR WHAT I THINK ABOUT THE PRESIDENT. readymade. use of found images. ‘The photograph is I USE NATURE. I USE FOUND IMAGES.3 an alternate subject, another layer that – Vija Celmins Artist Link creates distance. And distance creates an opportunity to view the work more The German artist As a young girl in her newly settled Richard Hamilton and Andy Warhol.5 slowly and to explore your relationship (b. 1932) also painted directly from home in Indianapolis, Indiana, Celmins’ work from this period is often to it. I treat the photograph as an object, photographs he found in magazines. Celmins began collecting images mentioned in relation to Pop, because of to scan and re-make in my art.’7 While Richter also painted from from comic books and picture playing her use of found photographs as source photographs of skies and war planes, cards. Highlighting the importance of material but Celmins’ work is far removed Activity his found source material also included family photographs. imagery from this early age the artist from the brash consumerism that Choose your own readymade using 6 later reflected: ‘I had stacks of comics seemed to typify . She looked an image of an everyday object. because I had sort of taught myself to the object paintings of Magritte and how to read, because I couldn’t speak for inspiration. Her English. I only spoke Latvian, really’.4 early object paintings and interest in scientific imagery led to her drawings Celmins began using found photography and prints of seas, night skies and as her source material in the mid-1960s, deserts, with their extraordinary surfaces during the period when she was also and physical presence. engaged in making sculpture based on everyday functional objects. Images of lunar surfaces, galaxies, These sculptures are striking in their planets, oceans, falling planes and resemblance to actual objects and nuclear experiments allude to a sense employ the Surrealist method of of great space and drama. Celmins first changing the size and scale. worked from photographs and clippings of planets and lunar surfaces during The found or common object – with a period when official images first its origins in Marcel Duchamp and his appeared in the media. The late 1960s readymades from the 1910s – was a saw the culmination of the great ‘space popular subject in Pop Art, at its peak race’ between the Soviet Union and the during the 1960s. Duchamp’s work USA with the landmark Apollo 11 moon saw something of a revival during this landing on July 20, 1969. period, particularly for artists such as

[3] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/learn/ archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 29, accessed, 1 April 2014. [4] Ibid, p.6. [5] Celmins referred to Duchamp in the Concentric Bearings series using a photograph of his optical illusion device Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics) 1920 as source material. [6] Celmins work was included in the publication Pop Art because of her interest in everyday objects. Edited by Lucy Lippard it was first published in 1966. [7] William S. Bartman (Ed.), Vija Celmins interviewed by Chuck Close, New York, 1991, p.12. Vija Celmins Concentric Bearings A 1984 (detail)

06 07 THE NATURAL WORLD

THE IMAGES ARE NOT FROM OBSERVATIONS OF NATURE, BUT ARE ’FOUND IMAGES’ FROM OLD MAGAZINES, BOOKS AND PHOTOS. THUS THEY ARE ALREADY FLATTENED AND A STEP REMOVED FROM NATURE. MY WORK LIES BETWEEN INTIMACY AND DISTANCE.8 – Vija Celmins

Celmins’ body of work is part of an Images of the ocean first appeared in engagement with the natural world Celmins’ work in 1968, with a series evident throughout the history of art. of graphite pencil on paper drawings Giotto’s The Lamentation c.1305 from that experimented with variations in the the Arena Chapel in Prado with its deep density and tone of graphite. Speaking blue skies is a painting which made a of its reappearance across many works strong impression on Celmins as she and various decades, Celmins noted: traveled around Europe as a student.9 ‘The ocean image is one that is part of In Celmins’ work however, the subject me and that I try to do every now and matter is secondary – her primary interest then with a new sensibility or process’.12 is that of making. She once said: ‘I could In Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992 the never do portraits, or things that are too ocean image is based on one of a group psychologically alive in the real world.’10 of photographs of the Pacific Ocean, taken by the artist near her studio in Celmins takes details from images of California in the late 1960s. nature’s surfaces and skies, but removes horizons or any central point of reference. In the extensive group of prints by Celmins She explores the representation of three- in ARTIST ROOMS there are two other dimensional space on a two-dimensional works that utilise the ocean motif: Drypoint surface. Speaking of her earliest works – Ocean Surface 1983 and Ocean based on photographs of the ocean she Surface Wood Engraving 2000. Its likely has said: ‘…when I started doing the that the same source photographs from oceans, I made a few decisions. One the 1960s, were used as the starting point decision was that I was going to go back for each of these printed images. Celmins to more of an abstract kind of work where took the photographs from the end of I mapped out the image on the surface of the pier where the vast ocean filled the 11 Vija Celmins Alliance 1983 my painting uniting the two closely’. camera’s viewfinder.

[8] Vija Celmins, Vija Celmins ARTIST ROOMS Tate Britain Display, http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/display/vija-celmins, accessed 1 April 2014. [9] Celmins would also encounter the work of Diego Velázquez on her travels. His sombre palette and would likewise become one her early influences. [10] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/learn/ archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 60, accessed, 1 April 2014. [11] Ibid. p.22. [12] Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, p.30.

08 09 Discussion Activity IMAGE AND SCALE Read the following quote from Celmins Collect images from magazines and and discuss its relation to her source newspapers to create a collage of MAYBE I IDENTIFY WITH THE SPIDER. I’M THE KIND OF PERSON WHO WORKS ON SOMETHING FOREVER AND THEN WORKS ON THE SAME IMAGE AGAIN material and the finished artwork: images. Think about how you might place THE NEXT DAY.14 ‘I use an image that has a lot of the images together, what unifies the – Vija Celmins associations with it, which I put in images and how you might crop them. this very cold, scientific kind of no style manner that I like in my work... Artist Link For Celmins a work of art doesn’t ‘My feeling about the size of the borders you know, just the facts as complicated British artist Richard Long (b. 1945) represent anything but itself. Through has a corresponding effect on how one 17 as they are.’13 explores the body in relation to the the photographic source material of perceives the image.’ oceans, night skies and deserts she natural environment, creating artworks Viewing Celmins’ works based on relentlessly explores the image and the inspired by and documenting his photographs of spider webs offers a richness of its variation. As subjects solitary walks. different sense of perspective to the night they are united by their depiction of skies and deserts. The spider webs are boundless nature and suggestion of the viewed relatively at the same angle and infinite. Speaking of her use of these scale as they might be in nature. The images Celmins stated: ‘I was so turned web however – like the night sky and on by these scientific images, and I just desert floor – acts as a kind of map as it couldn’t help but redo them’.15 describes a surface. The effect of seeing In her prints such as Alliance 1983 these works together invites the viewer Celmins began making double-plate to consider not just perspective but images just as she had previously made proportion and scale. double image drawings (see Untitled Like the desert, lunar surface and (Galaxy-Desert) 1974). The juxtaposition galaxies Celmins has explored the of the images creates a dialogue spider’s web serially. The writer and between the night sky and another kind curator Elita Ansone relates the spiders of spatial exploration on the picture web to the night skies and that ‘with each plane, such as an engineers drawing of work Celmins presents a different feeling a ship or a desert floor. The placement and a different image, as if each were of the image on the support is of crucial a new galaxy.’18 Web #1 1999 is one importance to Celmins because ‘the of five spider web works by Celmins in images tend to run on and on, they ARTIST ROOMS, the remaining four of have to be carefully ended’.16 In her which are examples of the artist’s wide- printmaking the area of white paper ranging printmaking practice, produced increased so that the image became and published two years after Web #1. more concentrated. Celmins has said:

[14] Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, p.30. Vija Celmins Web #1 1999 [15] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/learn/ archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 29, accessed, 1 April 2014. [16] Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2002, p.14. [13] Susan Sollins, Art: 21: art in the twenty-first century, Vol. ,2 Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003, p.170. Quote revised by the artist Wednesday 11 June 2014, New York. [17] Ibid. p.15. [18] Elita Ansone, Vija Celmins Double Reality, Latvian National Museum of Art, 2014, p.113. 10 11 Vija Celmins Untitled (Desert-Galaxy) 1974 Discussion for lino or polystyrene remembering to PROCESSES AND MATERIALS remove the areas you want to appear Think about other artists who depict the white, inking and then pressing the natural world such as J.M.W. Turner AS I WAS WORKING WITH THE PENCIL, I GOT INTO SOME OF THE QUALITIES surface with a sheet of paper. OF THE PENCIL ITSELF. THAT’S HOW THE GALAXIES DEVELOPED.19 and discuss how their work differs from – Vija Celmins Celmins’ in approach and subject. Artist Link Activity The American artist During the course of her career Celmins Celmins returned to painting in 1983 has created sculptures, paintings, drawings feeling she had exhausted graphite Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992 is a (1912–2004) is known for her and prints. Her painstakingly rendered and taken drawing as far as she could type of relief print. The process involves paintings which are made up of works focus on a narrow range of subjects go. In 1994 she returned to drawing a drawing being cut into the wood horizontal bands of colour, separated and are limited to a restricted monotone with a series of night skies but instead surface so that the incisions translate by faint hand-drawn pencil lines. palette.20 The rigour with which Celmins of graphite her materials were now in reverse and seen as the un-inked Martin, like Celmins, had a love of executes her work is evident throughout charcoal and eraser. In drawings such white lines of the print. You can create the surface and accounted for every her process from the selection of paper as Night Sky #19 Celmins builds on the your own relief print subsituting wood inch of it with her vigorous grids. and material, the decision of scale and surface of the paper using the charcoal the choice of source material. Her artistic and removes areas with various types of process involves masking out a desired eraser, eventually exposing the paper. area within a photograph and then The white areas reveal the radiating replicating what she has framed using strands of the web of stars in the night a grey-scale palette, inspired by the sky: ‘I like to see the paper, because actual black-and-white photographs from the paper is a player’.23 which the work was developed. Printmaking has also been an important In 1968 Celmins stopped painting in part of Celmins artistic output and she favour of drawing in graphite, later has worked with print media since saying ‘...when I started doing graphite the early 1960s. The 1980s were a I got really into it…I was obsessed. particularly productive period for the I pushed the limits of the pencil to artist when she worked on series such hold the image and make for strong as Concentric Bearings, Alliance and work’.21 She spent the next few years Constellation Uncello made at Gemini, drawing intense single images with G.E.L. in Los Angeles. Celmins works in no composition before she started traditional intaglio (see Alliance 1983), putting images together on a single lithographic (see Untitled Portfolio: sheet of paper. Untitled (Desert-Galaxy) Galaxy 1975), and relief processes 1974 is an early example of these (see Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992) double images, which sees Celmins to make her prints. return to the recurring motifs of the desert landscape and the night sky.22

[19] Susan Sollins, Art: 21: art in the twenty-first century, Vol. ,2 Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003, p.171. Vija Celmins Ocean Surface Woodcut 1992 (detail) [20] Her earliest paintings have little evident colour and she quickly eliminated all colour due to its decorative associations. [21] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/learn/ archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 28, accessed, 1 April 2014. Quotation revised by artist Wednesday 11 June 2014, New York. [22] When working with graphite Celmins first coats the paper with acrylic to create a layer on the paper and reinforce the graphite. [23] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, 14 https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/learn/archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 36, accessed, 1 April 2014. 15 MEMORY

THERE WAS A LITTLE PERIOD WHERE I THINK, IN SOME STRANGE, INTUITIVE WAY, I SORT OF DEALT WITH THE MEMORIES OF WAR.24 – Vija Celmins

Celmins began collecting photographs a nomad who could find her bearings and buying books containing imagery of from the infinitesimal reference points the Second World War in Los Angeles that nature offers’.26 in the mid-1960s. Some of these images House #2 1965 is among Celmins of warplanes were subjects for paintings earliest sculptural work and relates to such as German Plane 1966 (Modern her wartime childhood experiences. Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas). Here Celmins painted fires and plane Although Celmins’ work is generally not crashes on the outside of the dollshouse. autobiographical she has conceded that The sculpture is given additional many of these works are related to her pertinence by the knowledge that early childhood memories in Latvia of Celmins’ father was a builder of houses the Second World War. Reflecting on and the political backdrop in the 1960s these childhood memories she revealed: included escalating protests against ‘…it was a good time of great stress, the Vietnam War. Discussing her early mostly because there was so much sculptural works and making specific noise and chaos. And my biggest fear reference to House #2 (one of her was being left somewhere and not favourite pieces from the time) Celmins Vija Celmins Night Sky #19 1999 finding my parents’.25 has said: ‘I have to admit that there is a During the late 1960s Celmins also psychological component to the work.’27 Discussion characteristics of the media when your made paintings from photographs The warplane is also present in the applying it and what that effect that of smoking guns, automobile crashes Celmins has said that her galaxy Concentric Bearings series 1984. These has on the finished image. and explosions. Writing in the catalogue paintings and drawings developed out prints are an important series, which for her retrospective at Institute of of using the pencil. Look at drawings Artist Link Celmins produced with the Gemini Contemporary Arts, Philadelphia such as Untitled (Desert-Galaxy) 1974 G.E.L. print workshop in Los Angeles. American artist (b. 1930) Dave Hickey suggested that Celmins’ and discuss how a subject might In Concentric Bearings B 1984 an image was a major influence on Celmins. shift from imagery of war and violence develop through a medium. of a falling plane being shot at is placed Johns is best known for his use of to the ocean, desert and sky, paralleled next to Celmins’ image of stars shooting Activity commonplace images such as flags a shift in her ‘personal life from the or numbers. He is a painter and in the night sky. Use some charcoal to create a drawing status of a refugee to a nomad – printmaker, working in lithographs, working in reverse to reveal the white etchings, screenprints, and embossed of the paper. Think about the distinct paper and lead reliefs. [24] Betsy Sussler, Interview with Vija Celmins, The Museum of Modern Art, October 18, 2011, https://www.moma.org/pdfs/docs/ learn/archives/transcript_celmins.pdf, p. 4, accessed, 1 April 2014. [25] Ibid. p.2. [26] Jonas Storsve and others, Vija Celmins: Dessins = Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris 2006, pp.23-4. [27] William S. Bartman (Ed.), Vija Celmins interviewed by Chuck Close, New York, 1991, p.20.

16 17 TIME

THE REASON I THINK I DO IMAGES THAT REQUIRE SO MUCH TIME IS THAT I FEEL THE PHYSICAL WORK ITSELF LETS SOME OTHER THING THAT CAME THROUGH, LETTING SOMETHING UNCONSCIOUSLY SEEP THROUGH, SOME SUBTLETY THAT MY BRAIN WAS NOT CAPABLE OF FIGURING OUT…28 – Vija Celmins

While there is a cosmic sense of time IS NOT THE IMAGE EXPERIENCED IN about Celmins elemental subject matter, LIFE, BUT IN ANOTHER REALITY.’ 29 it also allows the artist to approach Although Celmins has been associated space and light in a singular way. The with several art movements during her subjects allow the artist to explore the career – including Pop Art, Minimalism relationship between deep space and and, to a lesser extent, Conceptual Art the flat plane of the picture’s surface. – she seems always to have operated Influenced by Ad Reinhardt’s Twelve outside the dominant trends of the day. Rules for a New Academy 1953, The rigour and the intuitive nature of Celmins started to consciously strip her process has restricted the volume of Vija Celmins Concentric Bearings B 1984 (detail) away elements in her art and rejected her creative output and in turn limited gesture and composing. Returning displays of her work. Pop artists in Discussion piece exploring an aspect of history. This again and again to ocean views, lunar particular were known for their speedy may be connected to personal histories surfaces and star fields Celmins depicts production but Celmins works at her Think about images, sounds and smells or the social, cultural and political vast expanses and creates depth through own pace and has likened herself to which remind you of your childhood. history of your community. Consider the her investigation of the image and her the spider for its precise and industrious Discuss them in a group and identify possibilities of creating new, collaborative chosen material. Most of her images, like constructions. common memories and senses that stories that can be expressed not only Web #1 1999, are painted or drawn inform your memory. Shooting stars, turning planets and very close to the edge of the surface through art but also through music, rippling oceans suggest movement she is working on and seem to extend Activity performance, dance or drama. and the passing of time in Celmins’ beyond the canvas and into the space images. In the 1980s when Celmins was Gather historical information, such Artist Link occupied by the viewer. as photographs, drawings, letters particularly engaged in printmaking she The American artist Robert Therrien etc from your family archive and The focal point is the small compressed made the Concentric Bearings series, (b.1947) references childhood use it as the basis of a collaborative image in front of you; the illusion of which explored images of ‘turning memories. He transforms elements space from the image stays on it. As the space’.30 In the work Jupiter Moon from everyday life into works of art artist describes it, the image is ‘pinned – Constellation 1983 from the same that evoke classical archetypes. down, in your mind it wants to expand period as the Concentric Bearings series out. Reality (the art) makes it stay where Celmins pairs one of Jupiter’s moons it is on the wall. ‘MADE, INVENTED – IT with a negative image of the night sky.

[28] Susan Sollins, Art: 21: art in the twenty-first century, Vol. 2, Harry N. Abrams, New York, 2003, p.162. Quotation revised by artist Wednesday 11 June 2014, New York. [29] Correspondence with the artist, 13 May 2014. [30] Celmins refers to turning space in relation the Concentric Bearings series. See Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002, p.35. 18 19 Discussion Using their age, ask the children to calculate the answers to the following Discuss the following quote from question: How many times have they Celmins in relation to time: ‘The image travelled around the Sun? stays where it has been placed so rigorously and attentively. The original Artist Link photographic source is from another space we have lived in but is transferred American artist Andy Warhol by the making into another space.’31 (1928–87) is perhaps best known for his Pop inspired paintings but started Activity as a graphic artist before moving towards more ‘instant’ methods of The Earth orbits the Sun once a year production such as photography, and the Moon takes approximately film and screenprintng. twenty-eight days to orbit the Earth.

Vija Celmins Constellation – Uccello 1983 (detail)

[31] Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 2002.p.16. Vija Celmins Jupiter Moon – Constellation 1983 (detail)

20 21 FURTHER READING GLOSSARY

Websites Digital Resources ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM such as Untitled (Desert-Galaxy) 1974 the ARTIST ROOMS: http://www.nationalgalleries.org/ An art movement characterised by artist presents two individual drawings http://www.nationalgalleries.org/ collection/artists/vija-celmins experimental, non-representational side by side on the same sheet of paper. collection/artistrooms/ http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/vija- The artist has also employed the triptych celmins painting originating in the USA in http://www.tate.org.uk/artist-rooms the 1940s, marked by free, gestural device which brings together three http://www.artistrooms.org/ http://www.c4gallery.com/artist/ technique, a preference for dramatically images in one artwork. database/vija-celmins/vija-celmins.html ARTIST ROOMS on Tour: large canvases, and a desire to http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/ MARCEL DUCHAMP http://www.artfund.org/what-to-see/artist- give spontaneous expression to the multimedia/videos/99 rooms unconscious. French artist (1887–1968), associated with Dada. Duchamp rejected ‘retinal art’ in McKee Gallery Further Reading COMA BERENICES the early 1910s. He emigrated to the USA http://mckeegallery.com/artists/vija- William S. Bartman (ed.), Vija Celmins, A constellation of stars visible in in 1915 and was a major influence on celmins/ Interviewed by Chuck Close, New York, the Earth’s night sky. Celmins used artists emerging in the mid-1950s until the 1992. photographs of the Coma Berenices for present day. He is sometimes referred to as http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/ Vija Celmins and Eliot Weinberger, the lithograph Untitled Portfolio: Galaxy the ‘father of conceptual art’. artwork/artist/Celmins%2C+Vija The Stars, Museum of Modern Art, 1975 and Untitled (Desert-Galaxy) New York, 2005. GEMINI G.E.L. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 1974from the ARTIST ROOMS collection. Gemini G.E.L. (Graphic Editions Limited) http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/ Julia Friedrich and Kasper König is an artists’ workshop and publisher of collection/artists/898/art work (eds.), Vija Celmins: Desert, Sea & CHUCK CLOSE Stars, exhibition catalogue, Verlag der American artist (b.1940) best known limited edition prints and sculptures in Whitney Museum of American Art, Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, for his large-scale photorealist portraits, Los Angeles. It was founded in 1966 2 011. composed of tiny airbrush bursts, and the workshop has collaborated with http://whitney.org/Collection/VijaCelmins artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Susan C. Larson, Vija Celmins: A Survey thumbprints, or looping multi-colour Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indiana Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Newport brushstrokes. Close befriended Celmins Claes Oldenburg, and Ed Ruscha, http://www.imamuseum.org/collections/ Harbor Museum, Newport Beach, 1980. while they studied together at Yale artist/celmins-vija Summer School of Music and Art, among many others, to create editioned Lane Relvea, Robert Gober and Briony Connecticut, 1961. multiples in media including lithography, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fer, Vija Celmins, London, 2004. etching, screenprinting, woodcut and a Texas – key works Samantha Rippner, The Prints of Vija DIPTYCH wide variety of sculptural materials. http://themodern.org/collection/artists/ Celmins, exhibition catalogue, Metropolitan Celmins Traditionally in art a diptych is any object GIOTTO DI BONDONE Museum of Art, New York 2002. with two flat panels attached at a hinge. Museum of Contemporary Art, Franklin Sirmans and Michelle White, Vija The diptych was a common format in Italian painter and architect (c.1266- Los Angeles – key works Celmins: Television and Disaster 1964- Renaissance painting and depicted 1337), known as Giotto, from Florence http://collections.lacma.org/node/167457 1966, Yale University Press, New Haven; subjects ranging from secular portraiture in the late Middle Ages. He is generally Philadelphia Museum of Art London, 2010. to religious stories. More recently diptychs considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Italian http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/ Jonas Storsve and others, Vija Celmins: in art have not necessarily been physically Renaissance. Among his works is The permanent/86458.html Dessins = Drawings, exhibition catalogue, attached. Many modern artists such as and Francis Bacon have Lamentation c.1305 in the Arena Chapel Walker Art Center, Minnesota Centre Pompidou, Paris 2006. used paired images. In Celmins’ diptych’s in Padua, Veneto, Italy. http://www.walkerart.org/collections/ Jan Tannenbaum, Vija Celmins, exhibition artists/vija-celmins catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Arts, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1992. 22 23 INTAGLIO RENÉ MAGRITTE economical use of colour and surface, SURREALISM Intaglio is from the family of printing Belgian artist (1898-1967) who was a Morandi is considered an important An avant-garde art movement that began and printmaking techniques in which the major figure in the Surrealist movement. forerunner of Minimalism. in the early 1920s. The movement was image is incised into a surface, and the His primary role was as a painter, launched in Paris by French poet André incised line or sunken area holds the ink. and he frequently delved into mystical JACKSON POLLOCK Breton with the publication of his Manifesto It is the direct opposite of a relief print. concepts and the disconnection American artist (1912-56) known for of Surrealism. The aim of surrealism was to between objects, people, and their his completely abstract ‘all-over’ style reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with WILLEM DE KOONING meanings. Celmins paid homage to to which was given the name Abstract rational life. Surrealism also aimed at social American artist (1904-97) associated Magritte in her early sculpture Untitled Expressionism. His involvement with and political revolution and for a time with Abstract Expressionism. He was (Comb) 1970. gestural painting culminated in his use from was affiliated to the Communist party. part of a group of artists that came to 1947 of a technique of dripping trails of Celmins’ early sculptures are often be known as the New York School. BRICE MARDEN paint onto a canvas laid flat on the floor. associated with Surrealism because Although de Kooning was considered to American artist (b.1938) often of their exaggerated scale. be an Abstract Expressionist he depicted associated with Minimalism and best POP ART the human figure throughout his painting. known for his subtle explorations of An art movement that emerged in the DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ colour, texture, and form. Marden mid-1950s in Britain and in the late One of the great European painters JASPER JOHNS befriended Celmins while they studied 1950s in the USA. Pop Art presented a (1599-1660) of the Baroque era. His American artist (b. 1930), forerunner of together at Yale Summer School of challenge to the traditions of fine art by paintings include landscapes, portraits, Pop Art, who works primarily in painting Music and Art, Connecticut, 1961. including found imagery from popular mythological and religious subjects and printmaking. Johns’ influence culture such as advertising, news, etc. and scenes from common life. He often on Celmins can be seen in her early AGNES MARTIN Celmins’ early paintings were often used a sombre palette and was one paintings of ordinary objects such as a American artist (1912-2004) often associated with Pop Art because of her Celmins’ early influences. heater, a lamp and a television set. associated with Minimalism though use of found mass-produced images. she preferred to be associated with PAOLO UCCELLO LITHOGRAPHY the Abstract Expressionists. Martin AD REINHARDT An Italian Renaissance painter and a A method of printing originally based was referred to as a Minimalist American abstract painter (1913–67) mathematician (1397-1475) who was on the principle that oil and water because of her spare paintings and associated with the Abstract notable for his pioneering work on visual do not mix. Printing is from a stone drawings, which featured large grids Expressionist movement. In 1953 perspective in art. In the work Constellation (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate drawn by hand in ink or graphite we published the text ‘Twelve Rules – Uccello 1983 Celmins brings together with a smooth surface. It was invented on paper or canvas. for the New Academy’. The twelve own image of the night sky and a found in 1796 by German author and actor rules challenged accepted forms image of a drawing by Uccello. Alois Senefelder as a cheap method of MINIMAL ART of representation and became an publishing theatrical works. Lithography An art movement from the late 1960s. inspiration for Celmins. VIETNAM WAR can be used to print text or artwork onto Minimalist artists typically made works A prolonged conflict (1959-75) between paper or other suitable material. in simple geometric shapes based on the RELIEF PRINTING nationalist forces attempting to unify the square and the rectangle. Many minimal A printmaking process where protruding country of Vietnam under a communist LUCY LIPPARD works explore the properties of their surface faces of the printing plate or block government and the An American writer, art critic and materials, which were often industrial. are inked; recessed areas are ink free. attempting to prevent the spread of curator (born 1937) best known Printing the image is therefore a relatively communism. The involvement of the as being among the first writers to GIORGIO MORANDI simple matter of inking the face of the United States escalated in the mid- recognise the dematerialisation at work Italian artist (1890-1964) known for his matrix and bringing it in firm contact with 1960s with deployment of the first in conceptual art and was an early still-life groupings of bottles, pots, and the paper. A printing-press may not be ground troops. The war sparked mass champion of feminist art. She included occasional landscapes. Through his needed as the back of the paper can be protests and many artists including Celmins in an early chronology of Pop simple and repetitive motifs and rubbed or pressed by hand with a simple Celmins demonstrated against the war. Art in 1966. tool such as a brayer or roller.

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