Vija Celmins Resource Pack About This Resource Contents
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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 Art), MoMA (the Museum of Modern Art, New York), the Whitney Museum (New York), SFMoMA (San 6. TIME 17 Francisco Museum of Modern Art), 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 arts, 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 Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Ed Ruscha and Douglas Gordon. 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, Latvia 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 Indianapolis, Latvia and Germany during the Second which have been painted in acrylic travelled to Los Angeles, New York Indiana. Celmins studied painting 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 Yale University 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 Chuck Close and would return to throughout her career. G.E.L. – an artists printmaking and New York 2002; Vija Celmins: Television Brice Marden. 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 paintings based on photographs. [1] See Jonas Storvse, ‘Going from One Place to Another’ in Vija Celmins: Dessins = Drawings, exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, 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 Gerhard Richter 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 Pop Art. 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 Giorgio Morandi 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.