Studio 3 Gallery is pleased to present Beautifully Obscene: The History of the Erotic Print. Featuring over 30 works from across Europe and Japan and spanning the course of 500 years, the exhibition incorporates the different approaches used by artists in order to explore themes of sexuality, gender roles and power. The show explores Sir Kenneth Clark’s famous distinction between the socially-acceptable ‘nude’, and the socially-pejorative ‘naked’ body, with the majority of the works included arguably belonging to the latter category. Beautifully Obscene will not only present viewers with a comprehensive study of the aesthetics of the human form and sexuality, but will also challenge our deeply ingrained discomfort with erotic visual representations, and suggest that beauty can in fact be found in the obscene.

Prints have historically been affordable ways to rapidly and economically reproduce and disseminate images, and this has created a rich legacy of erotic art. As well as showing how these themes have evolved across centuries and continents, this exhibition will also document how the viewers’ relationship to the image has shifted over time. Many of the older examples in the show come from books or pamphlets where they could be viewed intimately and privately. More recent and contemporary works were intended to be shown in a gallery setting, so expand the scale of the body, confronting the viewer directly.

The featured artists have represented motifs such as the classical nude of Western Antiquity, modern French eroticism, through to the explicit prints of 18th century Japanese Shunga, and contemporary meditations on the human form and sexuality. This exhibition explores what we reveal and what we conceal, and the hidden educational and religious connotations that the erotic can harbor. It questions societal fears of the explicit and the pornographic, tackling themes of sexuality, gender and the role of the erotic in a diverse range of cultures and eras. The principle aim of Beautifully Obscene is to study the aesthetics of the human form and sexuality; in order to challenge the deeply ingrained preconceptions against erotic visual representations, and to emphasize that beauty can in fact be found in the obscene.

Artists include: Pietro Aquila, Pietro Santi Bartoli, Monika Beisner, Jan de Bisschop, Emma Bradford, Simone Cantarini, Stephen Chambers, Marianne Clouzot, Gabriel Dauchot, Angele Delasalle, Roland Delcol ,Amandine Dore, Tracey Emin, Brad Faine, Henri Fantin-Latour, Valentin Le Fevre, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Othon Friesz, Frans de Geetre, Paul Guiramand, Sarah Hardacre, William Hogarth, Anita Klein, Rudolf Koch, Antonio Lafrery, Martin Van Maele , Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Patricia Nik-Dad, Pablo Picasso, André Provot, Felicien Rops, Berthommé de Saint-André, Alex Varenne, Marcel Vertes , Denis Volx, Lucas Vorsterman, and Shane Wheatcroft.

This exhibition has been organised by students from the Print Collecting and Curating Module at the University of Kent’s School of Arts. This course gives students the opportunity both to curate a museum-quality exhibition of their design and to acquire prints for the Kent Print Collection. In thinking about this exhibition, this year’s students wished to address the lack of erotic art in the permanent collection and to explore the rich and varied history of sensuality and eroticism depicted in print.

The Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) proudly presents the Philadelphia premiere of Both/And Richard Tuttle Print and Cloth. This unique, mulitfaceted installation of over five decades of work—from the mid-1960s to present—was conceived by Richard Tuttle, offering one of the most comprehensive experiences ever of this influential, contemporary American artist, who has a long history of collaboration with FWM, beginning in 1978 shortly after the Museum was founded by Artistic Director Marion Boulton Stroud. This installation will feature work from Tuttle’s two landmark textile and print surveys that originated in 2014: “Richard Tuttle: I Don’t Know . The Weave of Textile Language,” organized by Whitechapel Gallery in association with Tate Modern, London; and “Richard Tuttle: A Print Retrospective,” Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Maine, as well as the international premiere of new kimono work by the artist.

Currently an Artist-in-Residence at FWM, Tuttle’s new kimono work Extraordinary from this 2014-2015 residency will be on view in this major exhibition. The hand-sewn yukatas, or summer kimonos, are made of Sarashi cloth, a traditional Japanese cotton fabric. There are two editions of 20 plus 4 artist proofs, one for men and one for woman. The design and pattern in this edition of new work are Chusen dyed, a traditional Japanese method of dyeing using stencil paper, by Miyamoto Co., Ltd., in Osaka, Japan. The pattern in the woman’s yukata design is rotated 90 degrees when compared with the man’s design. As Tuttle stated in a conversation with the FWM studio staff, “By changing direction of the bars, dynamic energy is achieved.”

An exhibition brochure with an introduction by Marion Boulton Stroud, and contributions by FWM’s Artistic Advisor Mark Rosenthal and Curators Magnus af Petersens and Christina von Rotenhan, accompanies Tuttle’s dynamic work, which exists in the space between painting, sculpture, poetry, assemblage, drawing, and printmaking. The brochure checklist will pair the works of art on view with poems by the artist that are directly inspired by his pieces.

Centro proudly presents this exhibit highlighting artist Lorenzo Homar’s legacy within the art world. The showcase exhibit Homar: Art Binding Ties from Puerto Rico to NYC features selected artwork acquired through donations made to the archives. Also available for public viewing: an interview with Homar conducted by the Centro Oral History staff in 1983 as well as other documents from our Archives.

The exhibit runs from May 14 to September 30, 2015, and begins with the roundtable discussion on May 14 from 6-7:15 pm

The Puerto Rican Diaspora/Lorenzo Homar y la Diáspora puertorriqueña: 1928–1950.
Participants include Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones, emeritus professor at Princeton University, and Antonio Martorell, artist and Homar pupil, as well as Lena Burgos–Lafuente, professor of Hispanic Languages and Literature at SUNY Stony Brook, and Cristina Pérez Jiménez, a graduate student of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. They will discuss the social, political and cultural evolution that influenced Homar with the following presentations:

Arcadio Díaz-Quiñones Introduction. Lorenzo Homar: What Happens When We Put Diaspora and the Left at the Center?

Lena Burgos-Lafuente Etching Dissent: On Homar’s Ways of Seeing

Antonio Martorell Lorenzo, Larry, Lorenzo in three times

Cristina C. Pérez Jiménez “Esos eran años muy politizados”: Lorenzo Homar's Schooling in Socially-engaged Art

The subject of “famous places” was one of the most influential topics in the development of landscape imagery in Japan and was initially linked to courtly poetry practices that named and praised significant sites. By the later eighteenth century, savvy commercial publishers adapted the theme to create a new set of famous locales in the city of Edo and more distant must-see destinations. Later, modern print artists referenced the landscape tradition established in ukiyo-e prints when they selected famous sites for their own work, some reflecting the changes of the twentieth century, some promoting sites of national importance, and still others reimagining what constituted “landscape” and the “famous place” in Japan as well as in the world beyond. This exhibition brings together twentieth-century prints on this theme, with works selected from the holdings of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the University of Pennsylvania Library, and private collections.

Excelling in eerie effects and seductive textures, the late 17th-century medium of mezzotint blossomed from an amateur fascination and hobby of members of the nobility to the 18th century’s most popular reproductive printmaking method. Mezzotint engraving allowed artists to burnish soft highlights and volume into a textured copper plate that would otherwise print in a solid tone. This shading method contrasted dramatically with the standard intaglio medium, which involved either painstakingly incising engraved lines with a burin (a metal-cutting tool) or etching looser lines into a plate with acid. Ideal for nocturnal scenes, portraits, reproductions of paintings, lush landscapes, and garish anatomical and botanical studies, the versatile medium later lent itself to color printing and remains in use today.

Burnishing the Night brings together mezzotint prints, books with mezzotint illustrations, and other works on paper from the permanent collection that span the medium’s predominantly Northern European origins through its worldwide use in the 20th century. Several works in the show are by Irish mezzotint engravers, especially Thomas Frye, whose imaginative head studies will also be featured in this spring’s highly anticipated exhibition Ireland: Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690–1840. Frye’s evocative Young Man with a Candle from 1760 demonstrates the liquid effects made possible by the mezzotint medium, from the bulging, startled eyes to the dancing candlelit shadows and dripping wax. The viewer waits with bated breath along with this startled youth, enjoying the theatrical uncertainty of a ghost story, printed in velvet tones.

Prize Prints celebrates The Queen Sonja Print Award, a biennial prize established to encourage young artists working in the graphic arts. The exhibition features recent work by the 2012 and 2014 prize winners, Tiina Kivinen (Finland) and Svend-Allan Sørensen (Denmark), as well as a selection of works by the prize's founders, printmakers H.M. Queen Sonja of Norway, Kjell Nupen, and Ørnulf Opdahl. The exhibition also recognizes the exciting international collaboration between the print shops Ateljé Larsen (Helsingborg, Sweden) and Universal Limited Art Editions (Long Island, NY).