Wednesday, March 10, 2010
exhibitions
current exhibitions
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE
A Celebration of Henri Matisse
Master of Line and LightFebruary 6 - April 18, 2010
This comprehensive exhibition on the career of the great French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954) showcases over 170 works of art spanning 50 years of Matisse’s career, with particular emphasis placed on the role that printmaking played in the development of the artist’s career. The exhibition offers compelling evidence of the important role printmaking played in the evolution of Matisse’s visual ideas. The exhibition loosely follows the chronology of Matisse’s career, from the artist’s earliest print in 1900 to the last in 1951. Examples of every printmaking technique used by Matisse — etchings, monotypes, lithographs, linocuts, aquatints, drypoints, woodcuts and color prints — are included. Almost all of the prints involve serial imagery, with the artist showing the development of a reclining or seated pose, the integration of models within interiors, the study of facial expressions, and the transformation of a subject from a straight representation to something more abstract or developed.
The exhibition brings together works from the collection of the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation, with artworks bequeathed by Henri Matisse to his younger son Pierre (1900–1989) and a selection of works from the Baltimore Museum of Art’s world-renowned Cone Collection, formed by Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone. Many of the later prints in the exhibition are from a recent gift to the Baltimore Museum of Art from the Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation and will be shown for the first time in this exhibition. The majority of these works are rarely on view to the public due to their sensitivity to light.
(Images from top to bottom):
Young Girl Leaning on Her Elbows in front of Flowered Screen, 1923
Crayon lithograph with scraping
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1732-109020)
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Seated Odalisque, Left Knee Bent, Ornamental Background and Checkerboard, 1928
Oil on canvas
The Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, BMA 1950.255.
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Persian, 1929
Crayon lithograph with scraping
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1245-101015)
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Marie-Jose in a Yellow Dress (III), 1950
Color lift-ground aquatint (black with four colors)
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1454-104051)
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts
Nadia with a Serious Expression, 1948
Lift-ground aquatint
Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation (1411-104005)
© 2009 Succession H. Matisse/Artists
Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy American Federation of Arts
This exhibition has been made possible in Tampa by Bank of America
Additional support has been provided Dex Imaging and the Florida Communications Group
CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE
Taking Shape
Works from the Bank of America CollectionFebruary 6 - August 1, 2010
One of the most important trends in art of the 20th century was an ongoing coming-to-terms with what representation could be. The rise to prominence at the beginning of the century of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, and Henri Matisse, who questioned conventional notions of what constituted art and what was appropriate for a painted canvas, allowed artists by the middle of the 20th century not only to rid the painting of any reference to the natural world, but even to challenge the conventional notions of what shape a canvas could take.
Works in this exhibition, provided by Bank of America’s Art in our Communities program, approach sculpture in a manner that made many in the 1960s and 1970s rather uncomfortable, as the lines between the purity of the canvas and the presence of the three-dimensional started to blur. Taken together, these five artists provide a 30-year view into one of the most persistent questions: how to reconcile the two-dimensional painted surface with reality of a three-dimensional space Frank Stella’s Damascus Gate II (1968), Ellsworth Kelly’s Black with White Triangle (1973) and Sam Gilliam’s Blowing (2000) afford us the opportunity to see how the desire to push the actual structure of the painted surface into new forms — and, with the case of Gilliam, to actually remove the infrastructure altogether. Helen Frankenthaler's Spanning (1971) and Sam Francis’ Untitled (Ffp-76) (1976) show us the work of two artists who used the traditional canvas and frame set-up, but through the use of color and form pushed the boundary of the painting itself beyond the confines of the paintings’ edges. Together these artists argue that the work exists as a sum of its formal elements and not as an extension of a representational program, and call attention to the physical quality of the canvas itself.
The Tampa Museum of Art is pleased to present these important works of modern and contemporary art from the corporate collection of Bank of America. Through its Art in our Communities Program, Bank of America has converted its corporate art collection into a unique community resource from which museums and nonprofit galleries may borrow complete or customized exhibitions. By providing these exhibitions and the support required to host them, this program helps sustain community engagement and generate vital revenue for the nonprofits, creating stability in local communities. From 2008-2010, Bank of America will have loaned more than 30 exhibitions to museums nationwide.
Image:
Frank Stella (American, born 1936)
Damascus Gate II, 1968
Acrylic on Canvas
Collection of Bank of America # 42253
© 2009 Frank Stella/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
The Hidden City
Selections from the Martin Z. Margulies FoundationFebruary 6 - December 5, 2010
As a new addition to the urban landscape of Tampa and in an attempt to position the museum as a vital participant in the discussion about what makes a great city in the 21st century, the museum is pleased to present The Hidden City.
This special exhibition will feature international artists with multi-media installations that focus on the theme of urbanism over a three-decade period. Works by Doug Aitken, Peter Bialobrzeski, Donna Dennis, Pedro Cabrita Reis and Do-Ho Suh will be featured.
The opening of a new art museum has become an opportunity to celebrate the vision of architects and an acknowledgment that the presentation of art (designed to be seen in a modern day art museum) can be as important as the art itself. The Hidden City presents different voices about what makes a city a city, and acknowledges the interconnections and tensions among the professionally designed, the imaginary designed and the make-shift.
The Hidden City is the first in a series of four exhibitions to be drawn from The Margulies Collection of Miami, Florida, and co-curated by the museum and the Margulies Collection.
Life Captured
Garry Winogrand’s Women are BeautifulFebruary 6 - July 18, 2010
Garry Winogrand published his 85 photographs of women caught in everyday life taken during the 1960s in a volume titled Women are Beautiful (1975). The museum is pleased to be able to show, for the first time, its entire collection of Winogrand prints in the inaugural exhibition in its photography gallery.
Winogrand has become known for a street-style of photography characterized by a wide-angle lens and 35mm camera, available light and unposed subjects, and countless exposures. The critically accepted view of Winogrand has been that his “ambition was not to make good pictures, but through photography to know life.” The museum is presenting its entire holdings from the Women are Beautiful series to let us revisit this assessment of the photographer’s purpose and place.
Throughout his career, Winogrand enjoyed varying degrees of success. Two early exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, with other photographers including Diane Arbus and Lee Friendlander, established his place among a growing number of photographers who came to prominence in the 1960s. According to one historian, the goal of this new type of work was not clarity but authenticity; it sacrificed all other virtues to the virtue of simplicity, and would convey a meaning at a glance. The publication of Women are Beautiful, however, was neither a critical nor a financial homerun when it appeared in 1975.
Winogrand’s aesthetic is defined instead by its insistence on the authenticity that derives from being in the streets. He adopted a position in society not unlike the 19th-century French flaneur who was captivated by the activity of the street and set about to experience it and represent it. More than a mere recorder of his world, Winogrand long held a strong interest in discovering the subject through his process of capturing it. He eschewed earlier approaches of photographers such as Edward Weston, who pre-visualized the final work, preferring instead the immediacy of the streets and gaining more joy in the taking of photographs than in the actual developing of them. At his death in 1982, he left more than 700 rolls of yet-to-be developed film.
From Life to Death in the Ancient World
Selections from the Permanent CollectionFebruary 6, 2010 - January 30, 2011
From Life to Death in the Ancient World will feature works from the museum’s world-renowned antiquities collection. More than 120 works will be showcased, including painted pottery, terracottas, marble and bronze sculpture, and a selection of ancient coins, gold jewelry, and glass. Recognizing that many antiquities were first used in life and then deposited in tombs that ensured their survival until the present day, the exhibition explores important events and activities from life to death in ancient Greece, Italy and beyond.
A series of themes from ancient life is covered: music and education; athletics; life by the sea; love, beauty, and adornment; horses; warfare; wine, revelry, and theater. Many of these themes—which reflect strengths of the Tampa collection as well as favorites of ancient artists—overlap with one another, just as many works relate to multiple themes. There is also significant continuity between ancient and modern life, with depictions from classical antiquity of a number of objects and actions that remain easily recognizable today.
Further, the pervasive appearance of numerous immortal gods and goddesses in ancient art and culture indicates how closely they were thought to be involved in the human realm—a major difference from the lives of most people in the present day. Although the names and appearances of these gods and goddesses changed over time and between cultures (so that the Greek Aphrodite gave way to the Roman Venus, Dionysos to Bacchus, and so on), virtually every aspect of ancient life throughout the ancient Mediterranean world fell within the realm of one deity or another. As a result, there was often no clear separation between religious and non-religious life. People used a wide variety of objects as votive offerings to demonstrate their gratitude and devotion to the gods, from birth to burial and beyond.
