Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

MOCA Showcases Work Of Pioneering Armenian-American Artist Arshile G

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • MOCA Showcases Work Of Pioneering Armenian-American Artist Arshile G

    MOCA SHOWCASES WORK OF PIONEERING ARMENIAN-AMERICAN ARTIST ARSHILE GORKY IN WEST COAST PRESENTATION

    By Asbarez
    Apr 27th, 2010

    The Artist and His Mother, 1926-36, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 in Arshile
    Gorky: A Retrospective

    LOS ANGELES-The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA),
    presents Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective June 6 through September
    20, 2010, at MOCA Grand Avenue. This major traveling retrospective
    celebrates the extraordinary life and work of Arshile Gorky (b.

    c.1902, Khorkom, Armenia; d. 1948 Sherman, Connecticut), a seminal
    figure in the movement toward abstraction that transformed American
    art in the middle of the 20th century.

    Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective positions Gorky as a crucial forerunner
    of abstract expressionism, and as a passionate and dedicated artist
    whose tragic life often informed his groundbreaking and deeply personal
    paintings. The first full-scale survey of Gorky's oeuvre since 1981,
    this exhibition includes more than 120 works spanning the artist's
    25-year career.

    It features the artist's most significant paintings, sculptures,
    and works on paper, including two masterworks from MOCA's permanent
    collection-Study for The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1943) and Betrothal
    I (1947). Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is organized by Michael
    Taylor, the Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the
    Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the exhibition was on view October
    21, 2009, through January 10, 2010, before traveling to Tate Modern,
    London, February 10 through May 3, 2010. MOCA's presentation, the
    third on the exhibition's tour, is organized by MOCA Chief Curator
    Paul Schimmel.

    "As the only West Coast venue, MOCA is proud to present the work
    of this historically important artist who developed a unique and
    deeply influential visual language," commented Schimmel. "Gorky
    courageously re-shaped European modernism into the foundations of
    abstract expressionism. He inspired a new generation of artists
    demonstrating that the act of painting alone was enough to be both
    poetically charged and powerfully tragic. His legacy can be seen in
    the work of many of the major abstract expressionists represented
    in the MOCA's permanent collection, including Willem de Kooning and
    Mark Rothko."

    Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is the first major exhibition of its
    type in three decades and the first to benefit from the publication
    of three biographies of the artist: Nouritza Matossian's Black Angel:
    The Life of Arshile Gorky (1998), Matthew Spender's From a High Place:
    A Life of Arshile Gorky (1999), and Hayden Herrera's Arshile Gorky:
    His Life and Work (2003), all of which shed new light on the artist's
    Armenian background and his central role in the American avant-garde.

    This is the first major museum exhibition to highlight the artist's
    Armenian heritage and examine the impact of Gorky's experience of
    the Armenian Genocide on his life and work. The retrospective and its
    accompanying catalogue have also benefited from in-depth interviews
    with the artist's widow, Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky Fielding, who has
    generously supported the project from the start, through key loans
    and first-hand accounts of Gorky's artistic practice as well as his
    cultural milieu.

    Among the works to be included are such renowned paintings as the
    two versions of The Artist and his Mother (1926-36, Whitney Museum
    of American Art, New York, and about 1929-42, National Gallery of
    Art, Washington, D.C.); Waterfall (1943, Tate Modern, London); the
    Betrothal series, three large-scale works from 1947 reflecting Gorky's
    closer engagement with surrealist ideas and practices-Betrothal 1
    (The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles), The Betrothal (Yale
    University Art Gallery, New Haven), and The Betrothal II (Whitney
    Museum of American Art, New York)-which are being exhibited together
    for the second time at MOCA (the works were first exhibited together
    in MOCA's exhibition Focus Series: Gorky's Betrothals in 1994); The
    Plow and the Song (1947, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College,
    Ohio), which demonstrates Gorky's continuing engagement with memories
    of his rural Armenian childhood; Agony (1947, Museum of Modern Art, New
    York), Gorky's haunting late painting, a product of his increasingly
    tormented imagination in the late1940s; and Last Painting (Museo
    Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid), which was left unfinished on Gorky's easel
    at the time of his death in 1948. Some of the works included in the
    exhibition have not been on public view before, among them are the wood
    sculptures, Haikakan Gutan I, II, and III (Armenian Plow I, II and III)
    (1944, 1945, and 1947, collection of the Diocese of the Armenian Church
    of America, on deposit at the Calouste Gulbenkiam Foundation, Lisbon).

    Betrothal 1, 1947, oil on paper, 51 x 40 in At MOCA, Arshile Gorky:
    A Retrospective will be presented in a generally chronological
    sequence. Thematic groupings will represent each phase of Gorky's
    career, which underwent an astonishing metamorphosis as he assimilated
    the lessons of earlier masters and movements and utilized them in the
    service of his own artistic development. Beginning in the mid-1920s
    with Gorky's earliest experiments with the structural rigor of
    the paintings of Paul Cezanne, and continuing through his prolonged
    engagement with cubism in the 1930s, the exhibition ends with a series
    of intimate galleries showcasing the abstract surrealist inspired burst
    of creativity that dominated the final decade of Gorky's life and left
    us with so many breathtakingly beautiful paintings and drawings that
    form the foundation for abstract expressionism. In the early 1940s,
    Gorky's contact with surrealism informed his breakthrough landscapes
    in Virginia and the visionary works made in his spacious, light-filled
    studio on Union Square, which he called his "Creation Chamber."

    Several galleries in the exhibition highlight the artist's working
    process by presenting Gorky's most significant paintings alongside
    the numerous painstaking studies that informed their making.

    About The Artist

    Born Vosdanig Adoian around 1902 near Lake Van in an Armenian province
    of Ottoman Turkey, Gorky was a first-hand witness to the Turkish
    government's Armenian Genocide of 1915, which led the artist's family
    and thousands of others to flee.In 1920, Gorky emigrated to the United
    States, where, claiming to be a cousin of the Russian writer Maxim
    Gorky, he changed his name to Arshile Gorky. In 1924, Gorky settled
    in New York, where he became a largely self-taught artist.

    At a time when the American avant-garde privileged originality over
    traditional working methods, Gorky was a nonconformist twho developed
    his personal vocabulary through a series of intensive apprenticeships
    to the styles of other artists. He becamefamiliar with modern
    European art and embarked on a systematic study of its masters and
    their methods, from Paul Cezanne and Henri Matisse, whose landscapes
    and still-lifes he emulated masterfully, to Pablo Picasso's cubist and
    neoclassical works, andthe biomorphic abstractions of Joan Miro. Works
    by Giorgio de Chirico and Fernand Leger informed, respectively,
    Gorky's vast Nighttime, Enigma, and Nostalgia series of the early
    1930s and the sequence of murals on the theme of aviation that Gorky
    created in 1936 for the Administration Building of Newark Airport,
    under the aegis of the Public Works of Art Project (later the Works
    Progress Administration), through which Gorky and many other American
    modernists found employment during theGreat Depression. Gorky became
    fast friends with many of New York City's emerging avant-garde artists,
    including Stuart Davis, Willem de Kooning, John Graham, Isamu Noguchi,
    and David Smith. He briefly studied at the Grand Central School of
    Art, later becoming an art instructor there. Among his students was
    Mark Rothko.

    Gorky's relationships with members of the surrealist group in exile
    in the United States during the 1940s-including Andre Breton, Max
    Ernst, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, and Yves Tanguy-contributed to the
    development of his mature style, a highly original form of surrealist
    automatism characterized by biomorphic forms rendered with thinned-out
    washes of paint, as in Waterfall (1943) and his 1947 Betrothal series.

    After his marriage in 1941 to Agnes "Mougouch" Magruder, whose parents
    had a farm in Virginia, Gorky's experience of the American landscape
    would enrich his artistic vision, and, beginning in 1943, emerges as
    a central theme in the lush, evocative paintings for which Gorky is
    best known. The rich farmland and bucolic atmosphere of rural Virginia
    (and later Sherman, Connecticut) reminded Gorky of his father's farm
    near Lake Van, and inspired him to create freely improvised abstract
    works that combined memories of his Armenian childhood with direct
    observations from nature. The resulting paintings, such as Scent of
    Apricots on the Fields (1944) and The Plow and the Song series (1944-
    47), are remarkable for their evocative strength, lyrical beauty,
    and fecundity of organic forms.

    Gorky's last years were tragic. In January 1946, a fire in his
    Connecticut studio destroyed 27 recent paintings. Shortly thereafter,
    he underwent a painful operation for rectal cancer, and while
    recovering created some of the most powerful, though agonized,
    works of his final years, including the haunting Charred Beloved
    series (1946), which alludes to his lost paintings. In June 1948,
    Gorky was involved in a serious car accident that left him with a
    broken neck and temporarily paralyzed his painting arm. His young
    wife left him shortly afterward to pursue a brief affair with Matta,
    Gorky's friend and mentor. Gorky took his own life on July 21, 1948,
    leaving behind an impressive body of work that secured his reputation
    as one of the great painters of the 20th century and an important
    precursor to abstract expressionism.

    Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective is organized by the Philadelphia Museum
    of Art in association with Tate Modern, London, and The Museum of
    Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

    Waterfall, 1943, oil on canvas, 60 1/2 x 44 1/2 in.

    The international tour is made possible by the Terra Foundation for
    American Art. The U.S. tour is supported by The Lincy Foundation and
    the National Endowment for the Arts, and by an indemnity from the
    Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

    The exhibition at MOCA is presented by The Eli and Edythe Broad
    Foundation. Generous support is provided by Lenore S. and Bernard A.

    Greenberg; Parx Casino and Racetrack, Philadelphia; Steve Martin;
    The MOCA Contemporaries; and the Pasadena Art Alliance. Additional
    support is provided by the MOCA Friends of Arshile Gorky: Kip and Mary
    Ann Hagopian in honor of Charles E. Young, Mrs. Joseph H. Stein, Jr.,
    and Mrs. Louise Danelian.

    In-kind media support is provided by Ovation TV, Asbarez Daily
    Newspaper/Horizon Armenian TV, YEREVAN Magazine, and Los Angeles
    magazine.

    Exhibition Catalogue

    The exhibition is accompanied by a 400-page catalogue, Arshile
    Gorky: A Retrospective, published by the Philadelphia Museum
    of Art in association with Yale University Press. The catalogue
    includes essays by a group of noted art historians and curators:
    Harry Cooper, Jody Patterson, Robert Storr, Michael R. Taylor,
    and Kim Servart Theriault, who present new theoretical approaches
    to the artist's work. The essays build upon new biographical
    details about the artist's Armenian background that have emerged
    in recent years, while also exploring Gorky's creative thinking,
    his unique experimentation and extraordinary command of materials,
    and his imaginative exploration of various themes. The catalogue is
    fully illustrated in color and includes a section devoted to Gorky's
    exhibition history, a bibliography, and a chronology of his life and
    work. It is available for $65 at all MOCA Store locations.

    Related Events

    Members' Opening SATURDAY, JUNE 5, 7-11pm-MOCA Grand Avenue MOCA
    members receive an invitation for two to celebrate the opening of
    Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective on the West Coast at this legendary
    party honoring an Armenian-American artist who produced some of the
    most significant paintings of the 20th century. Cash bar and featuring
    a special music set and collaboration arranged by Serj Tankian.

    INFO 213-621-1794 or [email protected] FREE for MOCA members

    Opening Weekend Reception JUNE 2010-MOCA Grand Avenue A special
    performance by Armenian-American Interscope recording artist Tamar
    Kaprelian will take place as part of the exhibition opening events.

    INFO 213-621-1778

    Art Talks These informal discussions of current exhibitions
    feature artists, curators, critics, writers, and other arts
    professionals. Unless otherwise noted, talks take place in the
    exhibition galleries, attendance is FREE with museum admission,
    and reservations are not required.

    INFO 213-621-1745 or [email protected]

    Arshile Gorky and Abstract Expressionism: A Contested History SUNDAY,
    JUNE 6, 3pm-MOCA Grand Avenue, Ahmanson Auditorium In conjunction with
    Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Michael Taylor, exhibition curator and
    The Muriel and Philip Berman Curator of Modern Art at the Philadelphia
    Museum of Art, explores Gorky's complex and often misunderstood
    relationship with the abstract expressionist movement. The initial
    reception of Gorky's work after his death in 1948 paved the way for
    his gradual assimilation into the canon of abstract expressionism as
    it was formed in the 1950s by, among others, Clement Greenberg, Harold
    Rosenberg, Thomas Hess, Sam Hunter, and Dore Ashton. Gorky's work was
    acclaimed by these critics and art historians as an important precursor
    to the largescale abstract paintings of his friends and colleagues,
    such as Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Although
    universally accepted at the time, this reading of Gorky's work has
    been contested in recent years, since it deliberately downplays the
    artist's longstanding allegiance to surrealism during his lifetime,
    leading to a fundamental misreading of his work and its meaning.

    Arshile Gorky: Armenian Refugee and Exile SUNDAY, JUNE 20,
    3pm-MOCA Grand Avenue, Ahmanson Auditorium On the occasion of the
    exhibition Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Richard Hovannisian
    will discuss Gorky's relationship to Van and the history of the
    Armenian Genocide. Hovanissian is a professor of Armenian and Near
    Eastern history and Armenian Educational Foundation chair in modern
    Armenian history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA);
    the author or contributing editor of 25 volumes about Armenian or
    Armenian and Near Eastern history; and has served as a consultant to
    the California State Board of Education, authoring the chapter on the
    Armenian Genocide in the State's Social Studies Model Curriculum on
    Human Rights and Genocide.

    Screening and Q & A with Atom Egoyan In conjunction with Arshile
    Gorky: A Retrospective, THURSDAY, JUNE 24, 7pm-Pacific Design Center,
    SilverScreen Theater MOCA and the National Association for Armenian
    Studies and Research (NAASR) present ARARAT (2002, 115 min.), a film
    within a film. Written and directed by Academy-Award® nominated
    director Atom Egoyan and starring Arsinee Khanjian, Christopher
    Plummer, and Eric Bogosian, this film weaves together tales about
    a contemporary Armenian family, artist Arshile Gorky, and a tragic
    part of the history of the Armenian people. The screening will be
    followed by a Q & A with Egoyan.

    Gorky and (American) Surrealism SUNDAY, JUNE 27, 3pm-MOCA Grand
    Avenue, Ahmanson Auditorium In conjunction with Arshile Gorky:
    A Retrospective,artist, writer, and critic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe
    will discuss Gorky, the painter, his work, and its relationship
    to surrealism. Gilbert-Rolfe has exhibited his work nationally and
    internationally for over 35 years. Recent exhibitions include a 20-year
    retrospective (Ulrich Museum, University of Kansas 2006). He is the
    author of several critical texts including Beyond Piety: Critical
    Essays on the Visual Arts 1986-1993 and Immanence and Contradiction:
    Recent Essays on the Artistic Device. He is chair of the Graduate
    Art Program at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.

    Curator-led Exhibition Walkthrough THURSDAY, JULY 8, 6:30pm-MOCA
    Grand Avenue Join Paul Schimmel, MOCA chief curator and exhibition
    coordinator, for a walkthrough of Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective.

    The Crisis of Arshile Gorky THURSDAY, SEPT 16, 3pm-MOCA Grand Avenue,
    Ahmanson Auditorium Hear Kim Theriault, author of the critical study
    Rethinking Arshile Gorky and associate professor of art history,
    theory, and criticism at Dominican University, discuss Arshile Gorky,
    the Armenian Genocide, and crisis of identity in the artist and
    his work. Theriault is one of the first scholars to connect Gorky's
    traumatic past with his abstract work.

    Art Talks are made possible by The Times Mirror Foundation Endowment,
    Good Works Foundation, and the Department of Cultural Affairs, City
    of Los Angeles.

    Daily Program: Life with Gorky JUNE 6-SEPT 20, daily-MOCA Grand Avenue,
    Jean and Lewis Wolff Reading Room Life with Gorky (2010, 19.19 min.) is
    an intimate portrait of the artist by his granddaughter Cosima Spender,
    featuring interviews with Mougouch Gorky, the artist's widow. Charting
    Gorky's development as a painter, the film considers the impact of the
    artist's surroundings on his work, from the traumas of his Armenian
    childhood to his New York studio and the Virginia landscape. Life
    with Gorky is produced by the Arshile Gorky Foundation and Peacock
    Pictures for Tate Media and sponsored by Bloomberg.

    INFO 213-621-1745 or [email protected] FREE with museum admission;
    no reservations required

    Course: Memory in the Abstract: Painting and Arshile Gorky SATURDAYS:
    JULY 10-AUG 14, 11am-2pm-MOCA Grand Avenue and UCLA Extension
    Arshile Gorky's paintings define him as a crucial founder of abstract
    expressionism, and also as a passionate and dedicated artist whose
    tragic life often informed his groundbreaking and deeply personal
    paintings. His vivid explorations of homeland, family, and memory tell
    their stories through color, shape, and a dreamlike abstraction of
    the familiar world. In conjunction with the exhibition Arshile Gorky:
    A Retrospective, UCLA Extension offers a six-week course that examines
    the artist's work for inspiration. Students will tour the exhibition
    at MOCA during the first class. The following five meetings are held
    in the studio, where Gorky's techniques and concepts will be explored
    and students will create their own paintings looking at his methods
    and style.

    Instructor: Portia Hein's paintings and works on paper have been
    featured in exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and
    China, including (keep feeling) Fascination (2006) at California State
    University, Los Angeles's Luckman Gallery and Southern Exposure (2005)
    at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

    Advance registration required

    INFO/REG 310-825-9971 or uclaextension.edu 290 MOCA members, V7861B;
    $300 general, reg. # V7861

    Sunday Studio These free, artist-led workshops are held on the first
    Sunday of every month for all ages.

    INFO 213-621-1765 or [email protected] FREE; no reservations required

    SUNDAY, AUG 1, 1-3:30pm-MOCA Grand Avenue Drop in with your family and
    friends to explore how issues of identity can influence an artist's
    work with visiting artist Shizu Saldamando.

    Participate in a spotlight tour of Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective
    with our gallery educators; then, create your own artwork inspired
    by the exhibition.

    SUNDAY, SEPT 5, 1-3:30pm-MOCA Grand Avenue Spend some time in a
    spotlight tour of Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective to explore some of
    the artist's painting techniques and processes.

    Then, join guest artist Michael Pizzaro for painting with sounds,
    a hands-on workshop inspired by the exhibition.

    First Sundays are For Families is generously supported by Bank of
    America, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los
    Angeles County Arts Commission, and the Department of Cultural Affairs,
    City of Los Angeles.

    The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA)-Celebrating 30
    Years as the Nation's Leading Contemporary Art Museum Founded in 1979,
    MOCA's mission is to be the defining museum of contemporary art. The
    institution has achieved astonishing growth in its brief history-with
    three Los Angeles locations of architectural renown; more than 13,500
    members; a world-class permanent collection of nearly 6,000 works
    international in scope and among the finest in the nation; hallmark
    education programs that are widely emulated; award-winning publications
    that present original scholarship; and groundbreaking monographic,
    touring, and thematic exhibitions of international repute that survey
    the art of our time. MOCA is a private not-for-profit institution
    supported by its members, corporate and foundation support, government
    grants, and retail and admission revenues. MOCA Pacific Design Center
    is open 11am to 5pm Tuesday through Friday; 11am to 6pm on Saturday
    and Sunday; and closed on Monday. Admission to MOCA Pacific Design
    Center is

    always free. MOCA Grand Avenue and The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA
    are open 11am to 5pm on Monday and Friday; 11am to 8pm on Thursday;
    11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; and closed on Tuesday and
    Wednesday. General admission is $10 for adults; $5 for students with
    I.D. and seniors (65+); and free for MOCA members, children under 12,
    jurors with I.D., and everyone on Thursdays from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m.

    courtesy of Wells Fargo. For 24-hour information on current
    exhibitions, education programs, and special events, call 213/626-6222
    or access MOCA online at moca.org.
Working...
X