On the occasion of the upcoming 90th birthday of Franz Gertsch, MASI invites the artist to plan an exhibition devoted to his oeuvre. This has led to a remarkable and striking meeting between Gertsch's outstanding woodcuts and the wood engravings by two artists whom he regards as much more than simply pioneer revolutionaries of xylography, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch. Despite their historical distance and stylistic divergences, these three artists display profound and unexpected affinities, which extend far beyond the technique they share.

Franz Gertsch, born in 1930 in the Swiss town of Mörigen, is numbered among the most significant contemporary artists in Switzerland. From the time of his international breakthrough at the Documenta 5 in Kassel in 1972 until the present day, he has created a wide range of paintings and graphic works, which attempt a very special approach to reality. For Franz Gertsch, reality means both a pictorial and a conceptual challenge. Although he uses photos or slide projections as his points of departure, the paintings follow a logic all of their own, which aims for a rightness among all the elements.

Artist William Crutchfield (1932–2015), born in Indianapolis, Indiana, received a traditional studio training at the city’s Herron School of Art and later at Tulane University in New Orleans. His conventional education in the arts may have suited his eye for metronomic movement but perhaps not his prankish sense of humor.

Crutchfield moved to Los Angeles in 1967, settling near the shipyards of San Pedro, amid views of the bustling Port of Los Angeles. This industrial setting provided the artist with plenty of inspiration and subject material for his mechanically derived artworks (the artist once professed that the 1928 transatlantic flight of the Graf Zeppelin was one of his prime spiritual sources). The move also gave him the opportunity to create a more public persona after many years of teaching; that same year, he created a lithographic suite for publisher Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles and began regularly exhibiting in galleries.

Crutchfield continued to play with the theme of humankind’s fraught relationship with transportation throughout most of his career. Trains, ships, and airplanes are all portrayed as overbuilt models of modernity. Air Land Sea, a suite of 13 lithographs printed at Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in 1970, exemplifies the artist’s master draftsmanship, his keen understanding of engineering, his wry wit and, most of all, his fascination with sundry modes of conveyance.

The patriot, silversmith, and entrepreneur Paul Revere was forever immortalized in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1861 poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” but his genuine accomplishments are often eclipsed by the legend of the midnight journey. This groundbreaking exhibition featuring more than 150 objects re-examines Revere’s life, transforming visitors’ understanding of the innovative businessman through an in-depth exploration of his accomplishments as a silversmith, printmaker, and pioneering copper manufacturer. Organized by the American Antiquarian Society, it draws from their unparalleled collection of Revere engravings, and also includes glimmering silver tea services; commonplace objects such as shoe buckles, thimbles, and medical tools; and important public commissions such as a bronze courthouse bell, all of which reveal facets of this versatile artisan’s career. Coordinated at New-York Historical by Debra Schmidt Bach, curator of decorative arts

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 space flight, the Moody presents Moon Shot, an exhibition of works responding to the moon landing by a selection of innovative artists working from 1969 to the present.

Moon Shot is anchored by the historic presentation of “Stoned Moon,” a series of lithographs by Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008) that will be shown together for the first time at the Moody. As an artist-in-residence with NASA in 1969, Rauschenberg observed the Apollo 11 mission firsthand. In response, he created a series of 34 prints at Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles between 1969 and 1970. At the time of its printing, the series’ “Sky Garden” (1969) was the largest lithograph ever made; it was more than 7 feet tall, requiring a technical innovation in printmaking concurrent with the historic advancements in space travel.

Featured works include Andy Warhol’s Moonwalk (1987), silkscreen prints which represents the moon landing as an iconic moment in television history and Laurie Anderson’s virtual reality work, To the Moon (2018), co-created with Hsin-Chien Huang, which allows visitors to take their own experimental journey through space. Notable works by Siah Armajani, Nancy Graves, Rachel Rose, Katy Schimert, and Michelle Stuart will also be featured.

Opening Reception
Friday September 20, 6-8 pm
Central, Brown Foundation and Media Galleries

The prints in this exhibition reflect William Hogarth’s (1697–1764) pointed, shrewd, and satirical social and political commentary. His work appealed to a broad public, but this popularity prompted questions into the ethical issues around the production and distribution of prints, the right to profit from artistic labor, and the nature of what constitutes an original work of art.

Please visit the 'External Link' below for more information and access to the supplementary exhibition brochure (PDF download).

This lecture by prominent art historian and chief curator of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Kuroda Raiji, draws on new research and findings from his latest exhibition Woodcut Movements in Asia 1930s–2010s to deepen the discussion on the medium across Asia.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kuroda Raiji received his MA in Art History from the University of Tokyo. The exhibitions he curated at Fukuoka Art Museum (1985-99) and Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (1999- present) include Group Kyūshū-ha (1988), Neo Dada (1993), and Collective Kumo (1997); solo exhibitions of Rasheed Araeen (1993), Han Thi Pham (1997), Lee Bul (2001), Lionel Wendt (2002), and Long Chinsan [Lang Jingshan] (2011); and most recently Blaze Carved in Darkness: Woodcut Movements in Asia 1930s-2010s (2018). He was the lead curator of The Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale in 1999-2014. He is the author of Behind the Globalism: Sketches on Asian Contemporary Art 2009-2014 [Owarinaki kindai: Ajia bijutsu wo aruku 2009-2014] (Tokyo: grambooks, 2014).

ABOUT THE SYMPOSIUM
What is the strength in numbers? How does personal inquiry culminate in a gathering of energy, voices and ideas? This symposium charts the evolution of artistic collectivism in Asia and its impact on the course of art and cultural history. Prominent historians, curators and art practitioners examine how unique modes of collaboration have facilitated the exchange and archival of knowledge and catalyzed social change in the region and beyond.

This event is held in conjunction with the exhibition Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s. This exhibition investigates how experimental artists acted as catalysts for change during some of Asia’s most turbulent decades. It spotlights artistic responses to major global events such as the Cold War, and explores how artists challenged political, social and artistic conventions.

During his student days at Ohio State University, George Bellows wrestled with his plans for the future. Should he continue to pursue his college studies and showcase his promising talents as a baseball player on the Buckeyes varsity team or leave his native Columbus, Ohio, to become a professional artist? Even with an offer to stay in Ohio and sign a contract with the Cincinnati Reds, Bellows chose to pursue his passion for art. He dropped out of school before the end of his junior year and headed for New York City to try to equip himself to succeed in the art world. He enrolled in the New York School of Art in 1904 where he studied with renowned artist and teacher Robert Henri. From Henri, he learned to paint quickly and spontaneously and to appreciate the subject matter that surrounded him in the city. Tenement houses, urban riverside gatherings, nightclubs and teeming city streets all became fair game as subject matter for his paintings. His portrayals of the seedy world of professional boxing, especially the prize fights held at Sharkey’s Athletic Club (located across the street from his studio on Broadway), attracted widespread attention and generated critical acclaim. Bellows quickly rose up the ranks in the New York art world and by 1909, at the age of 26, he was elected to the National Academy, an astounding feat for such a young artist.

While Bellows was very comfortable with a paintbrush in his hand, by 1916 he expanded his repertoire to include lithography. His command of the medium grew rapidly, and he began to produce a large quantity of prints, often on the subjects he favored in paintings, including urban life and portraits, particularly of his friends and family. By the time of his tragically early death at the age of 42, Bellows had produced more than 170 lithographs, and he was considered among the greatest American practitioners of the medium. His work as a lithographer is the focus of an exhibition that will be held from August 10 through November 3, 2019.

The works are a portion of an extensive collection that has been assembled by Thomas Trang, who is a longtime resident of Columbus, Ohio. A passionate and prodigious collector, Trang has specialized in works by Columbus artists, including Alice Schille, James Roy Hopkins, Elijah Pierce and Emerson Burkhardt, in addition to Bellows. The prints in this exhibition illustrate the wide range of subject matter that inspired Bellows and demonstrate his mastery of lithography. A special feature of the exhibition will be to showcase numerous photographs, letters and other items associated with the artist, including college yearbooks that were illustrated by Bellows, all contributing to a fresh and personal look at one of America’s most treasured artists.

An opening reception for this exhibit is planned on September 15, 2019, from 2 to 4 p.m. with a presentation by collector Thomas Trang.

Featuring more than 50 prints and examples of his poetry, this museum exhibition is the first to focus on the work of Munio Makuuchi (born Howard Takahashi, 1934-2000) and serves as a reclamation of the artist’s visual and literary contributions.

The son of a Japanese-born father and American-born mother, Makuuchi and his family were confined in an incarceration camp for Japanese Americans from 1942 to 1945. The Minidoka Relocation Center in Idaho was one of ten facilities designed to contain over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the west coast during World War II. This pivotal experience was a catalyst for Makuuchi’s art as well as his rootless existence.

During his tumultuous life, Makuuchi was consistently shaped by challenges, yet the more obstacles he faced, the more defiantly he pursued his vision. Makuuchi’s mature period of work began in the early 1970s and reached a crescendo after his return in 1983 from teaching at the University of Ife, Nigeria. His early life trauma and family history set the stage and provided fuel for the productive work that was to follow.

The fully-illustrated catalogue accompanying the exhibition will be the first published scholarship on this largely unrecognized American artist, placing him within his social, historical, artistic, and literary context.

Strange Days: Dada, Surrealism, and the Book brings together rarely seen work from several of the greatest artists of the twentieth century, including Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Joan Miró, Louise Bourgeois, and others.

Poets and artists launched the Dada movement in 1916, holding a mirror of absurdity to the skewed rationalism of a society they deemed responsible for the horrors of World War I. In 1924, poet André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto fully established a new movement to go beyond what he viewed as the dead-end nihilism of Dada, invoking Freudian notions of the primacy of dreams and the unconscious while embracing the Dadaists' practice of chance operations.

Collaboration between artists and poets was common. For the Dadaists and Surrealists, the book form was an ideal performance space, uniquely suited to a meeting of disparate elements, as in collage, dream imagery, or free association in writing. The books in this exhibition offer eloquent testimony to the liberating power of hybrid expression.

Japanese artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the great masters of the Japanese landscape woodblock print. In 1833, he produced a suite of prints that followed the imperial road called the Tōkaidō, which ran from Edo (modern Tokyo) to the emperor’s palace in Kyoto. The road was originally developed for the ruling shogun, based in Edo, to bring offerings to the emperor. The government set up 53 stations along the Tōkaidō as stopping points for travelers. By Hiroshige’s time, the road was a popular scenic route, marked by many temples, shrines, shops, and inns, which he made famous through his prints.

The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tōkaidō (1834), in the DMA’s collection, is comprised of 55 prints, one of each of the stations plus two for the beginning and end points. The scenes are a blend of the grandeur of a noble feudal lord's (daimyō) lifestyle, realistic images of daily life and ordinary people like merchants or workers, and a refined depiction of nature, which was very important to the Japanese. Hiroshige was familiar with European painting and often introduced perspective into his prints, although the ultimate effect of his scenes is the distinct linear character of his designs. Inexpensive in their day, these prints served as travel souvenirs or as enticements to would-be travelers.

The complete series—once owned by architect Frank Lloyd Wright and gifted to the Museum by Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Marcus in 1984—will be on view at the DMA for the first time in more than 30 years.