Opening Reception: Friday, September 7, 5pm-7pm
Artist Talk: Thursday, September 27, 5pm, PS101

Santa Barbara, CA -- The Atkinson Gallery at Santa Barbara City College is pleased to present Mourning/Warning, an exhibit by Tia Blassingame. Blassingame is a book artist and printmaker exploring the intersection of race, history, and perception. Utilizing printmaking and book arts techniques, she renders racially-charged images and histories for a nuanced discussion on issues of race and racism. Blassingame holds a BA from Princeton University, MA from Corcoran College of Art + Design, and MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony. Her artists' books and prints can be found in library and museum collections around the world including Harvard University, Library of Congress, Stanford University, and State Library of Queensland. Her writing is featured in Freedom of the Presses: Artists' Books in the 21st Century, a Booklyn publication.

Featuring 28 prints from the Museum’s collection, including several designs that are the only known impression, Suzuki Harunobu and the Culture of Color offers a rare opportunity to see a rich assembly of work by one of the most celebrated artists in the history of the Japanese print. A painter and print designer, Suzuki Harunobu (1725?–1770) drew his subject matter not only from the urban entertainments of the city of Edo—what was known in his day as ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world”—but also from the classical poetry of China and Japan and scenes of everyday life. Harunobu’s imagery often conveys amusing subtexts that appealed especially to the cognoscenti of his day, but it was the striking color of his prints that drove his success at a critical moment in Japanese printmaking—and that has shaped his legacy ever since.

From about 1765 until his death in 1770, Harunobu dominated the field of full-color prints. Replacing the earlier prints of limited color palette, this technique used five or more woodblocks for each impression. The resulting prints were called “brocade pictures” (nishiki-e), a period term that nods to their sumptuous quality. The earliest single-sheet prints in the full-color technique were private commissions, made for wealthy aesthetes who exchanged them as gifts during the New Year celebrations of 1765 and 1766. Recognizing the appeal of these deluxe objects, Edo publishers quickly adopted the full-color printing technique for commercial use. Working collaboratively with publishers, patrons, carvers, and printers, Harunobu is estimated to have produced as many as 800 distinct print designs in the span of just five years. These nishiki-e transformed the publishing industry for single-sheet prints in Edo. After Harunobu’s career, the culture of color—increasingly saturated, sophisticated, and technically superb—became a fundamental characteristic of Japanese prints.

This exhibition investigates Harunobu’s contributions to the culture of color, as well as our perceptions of his legacy. Critics have long praised the pale, evanescent palette of Harunobu’s prints as evidence of a refined artistic sensibility. However, recent research has shown that his prints originally featured far more saturated, vivid hues, which have been lost over time. The pigments and dyes used in the early years of nishiki-e are highly sensitive to light and moisture. Certain plant-derived organic colorants not only fade, but transmute to another hue entirely. The fresh perspectives on Harunobu’s color offered in this exhibition incorporate the first fruits of an ongoing collaboration, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, between Dr. Tami Lasseter Clare, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Portland State University; Museum Conservator Samantha Springer; and Curator Dr. Jeannie Kenmotsu.

After the close of this exhibition, the prints will rest in the Museum vault for several years. However, thanks to a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Portland Art Museum is currently engaged in a multi-year project to photograph, digitize, and re-catalogue the entire Japanese print collection, making it accessible online for audiences worldwide. Images of all of the works in the exhibition can be found in the Museum’s Online Collections.

Over the last 35 years, Kerry James Marshall (American, born 1955) has created groundbreaking work that gives visibility to narratives centered on African American identity. Through his often monumental paintings that insert black protagonists into traditional Western art genres, Marshall has distinguished himself as one of the most acclaimed and influential artists of our time. Alongside his paintings, Marshall has an active practice making works on paper, which is the focus of this exhibition.

The show features a monumental, 12-panel woodcut print from 1998–99 that unfolds cinematically, taking the viewer from an aerial perspective of an urban grid into the intimate setting of a home. An array of drawings of smaller scale, spanning the arc of Marshall’s career, will complement the woodcut and emphasize the seminal artist’s ongoing investigations of private and public space. This exhibition is organized on the occasion of the inaugural iteration of FRONT International: Cleveland Triennial of Contemporary Art.

The American flag is an icon of patriotism, imbued with authority and cultural significance. This exhibition of works created in a range of media considers the American flag in the context of our time. As a representation of national identity, the flag purportedly encompasses a diversity of people, but it has also been used to substantiate the idea of American exceptionalism. Spanning more than 150 years, Former Glory questions our emotional connections to the flag and explores its presence in domestic and international communities. Humorous, violent, critical, and sentimental, these varied works acknowledge and reflect on American nationalism and our complex histories.

The American flag is an icon of patriotism, imbued with political gravitas and cultural significance. In 1824, Captain William Driver was gifted an American flag that would accompany him on many voyages during his 20-year career. He allegedly wrote, “It has ever been my staunch companion and protection. Savages and heathens, lowly and oppressed, hailed and welcomed it at the far end of the wide world. Then, why should it not be called Old Glory?”

This exhibition considers Old Glory—a term that has come to refer to all U.S. flags—in the context of our time. This administration’s desire to restore the United States to its “former glory,” making it ”great” again, reimagines a bygone era that may never have existed, stoking a nostalgia sustained by bigotry. As a representation of national identity, the flag supposedly represents a diversity of people, but it has also been used to substantiate ideas of American exceptionalism and exclusion.

Spanning more than 150 years, the objects in this gallery question our emotional connections to the flag by exploring its messages across domestic and international communities. Humorous, confrontational, critical, and sentimental, these varied works acknowledge and reflect on American nationalism and our complex histories.

RISD Museum is supported by a grant from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, through an appropriation by the Rhode Island General Assembly and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with the generous partnership of the Rhode Island School of Design, its Board of Trustees, and Museum Governors.

hundred years ago, a group of avant-garde young artists working in the north-eastern Dutch province of Groningen founded a collective known as De Ploeg (‘The Plough’). The group – including Jan Wiegers, Jan Altink, H.N. Werkman and Johan Dijkstra – felt it was high time to let go of 19th-century ideals and ‘plough over’ the art landscape. A chance encounter between Wiegers and the German Expressionist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner in Davos (Switzerland) accelerated developments. At a time when the horrors of the First World War led many artists to abandon experimentation, the group began to paint vividly coloured landscapes and expressive portraits in unruly brushstrokes and so developed their own distinctive form of Northern Expressionism. They also used prints as a medium for their experiments. The Gemeentemuseum Den Haag has been collecting works by De Ploeg ever since the 1930s. In 1960, it held a major exhibition of the group’s graphic work. This year’s De Ploeg centenary is being celebrated with a wide range of events in Groningen, the exhibition at the Groninger Museum being the centrepiece. On the other side of the country, the Gemeentemuseum is responding with a small but select exhibition that once again highlights the graphic work of De Ploeg.

A new art for a new, improved society. That is what many artists and designers were seeking around 1900. After a century of styles that literally quoted the past, a new form language emerged, based on asymmetry, curved lines and organic decorative motifs. The Netherlands played its own unique role in this artistic quest. In this country, Art Nouveau fizzed with a desire to innovate and with idealism, but it was also a search for the authentic. In this interdisciplinary exhibition, the Gemeentemuseum will showcase fin de siècle decorative arts in a broad context, making the dynamics of the age (1884-1914) visible, tangible and recognisable in this age where authenticity and craftsmanship are once more highly prized.

The art world’s urge to innovate around 1900 coincided with major changes in society. For the first time the urban population was growing faster than the rural population. New means of communication fostered internationalisation. The first cautious steps towards wider suffrage prompted the rise of equal rights movements. And industrialisation and growing prosperity made luxury and entertainment accessible to broader swathes of the population. In the art world, particularly among designers and decorative artists, these changes led to counterreactions, including a rediscovery of the value of nature, the countryside and the traditional.

As in neighbouring countries, the new industrial society was held responsible for the ‘decline in art’ in the Netherlands, too. ‘We are children of the age of the steam engine, the telegraph and electricity. We have turned our backs on the beautiful, and that is why we no longer understand it,’ decorative artist Johannes Ros lamented.

However, there were differences between the Netherlands and neighbouring Belgium and Germany. A new expressive form language that developed there was designed to appeal above all to an emerging zest for life in a world that was gathering momentum, whereas Art Nouveau in the Netherlands was a quest for the ‘truth’, the ‘genuine’, the original. The re-evaluation of tradition and skill, the reform of art education, appreciation of the perfection and pristine quality of nature, and fascination with exotic, ‘unspoilt’ cultures; here, the urge for innovation and idealism went hand in hand with a search for authenticity.

For over thirty years the Swiss artist has created a body of work with painting at its centre. Pictures for Everyone is devoted to his works in graphic art. Thomas Huber (b. 1955) lives and works in Berlin. He created paintings for the library of the Aargauer Kunsthaus, amongst other things.

Aside from painting, graphic arts assume great importance for the artist: over the last 38 years, Huber has made about 130 prints, multiples and posters which are included in the over 40 existing groups of works by the artist. Huber has constantly developed, using many different print techniques such as lithographs, etchings, aquatints, copperplate etc.

This retrospective exhibition of Thomas Huber’s entire graphic output shows the variety of possibilities and techniques of reproduction that plumb the rich potential of pictoriality and at the same time reveal its limits.

100 years after Martin Luther’s Reformation, the famous Defenestration of Prague of 23 May 1618 marked the symbolic beginning of a series of long-running wars in Central Europe. It wasn’t until the Peace of Westphalia was sealed in Osnabrück and Münster in 1648 that these conflicts came to an end, becoming known as the Thirty Years’ War. The clashes shook the foundations of the Holy Roman Empire, causing widespread devastation and inflicting great suffering upon those affected.

Striking visual documents from the collection convey the events and the underlying mood of the society of the time. In addition to the printed portraits and satirical pamphlets that enjoyed such popularity at the time, a number of image series depict the effects of the war on the general populace. Showing the actions of lone marauders or groups of soldiers, these print sequences shed light on the fates of individuals and small groups, and on the immediate effects that the war and its social catastrophes had on them.

A panoramic drawing of Dresden's Elbe Valley (1645) is at the center of this exhibition. This is a new acquisition of the Dresdner Kupferstich-Kabinett and it is a special testimony to the discovery of vision in the first half of the 17th century. The large-format drawing shows a surveyor at work in the foreground and served as a template for an engraving by Caspar Merian for his masterpiece "Topographia Germaniae".

Other cityscapes from city books, which became very popular from the second half of the 16th century until the 17th century, as well as depictions of the equipment of the Giant Hall in the Dresden Castle with Saxon vedutas complete the exhibition on early landscape representation and surveying.

The exhibition of the new acquisitions by the Cabinet d'art graphique is a regular and awaited event. This time, it is more than 100 works on paper to be seen. They have been acquired since 2011.