Nick Veasey is a British photographer working primarily with images created from X-ray imaging. Some of his works are partial photomanipulations with Photoshop. He therefore works with digital artists to realise his creations.
Norman Rockwell: Imagining Freedom explores themes and events in American history that still resonate today. (On View through September 7, 2020)
Four Freedoms
In the 1940s, Franklin D. Roosevelt developed a concept called the Four Freedoms—Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear—to persuade Americans to support the war effort. Not immediately embraced by the American public, the administration turned to the arts to help Americans understand and rally behind these enduring ideals. Artists, writers, actors, designers, and musicians were encouraged to take on the challenge of advancing the Four Freedoms as the U.S. prepared to enter World War II, moving away from its policy of neutrality.
Norman Rockwell, a renowned illustrator, was among those who took on the challenge to communicate visually the notions of freedom in support of the war efforts. The results were Rockwell’s popular Four Freedoms illustrations that depicted everyday community and domestic life that helped Americans rally for the defense of public freedom.
Civil Rights
The exhibition also showcases his post-war artworks from the 1960s, which address civil rights, human rights, and equality for all. One of the most powerful artworks on view in this section is the 1961 Golden Rule, which features people of different religions, races, and ethnicities with the inscription “Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You.” One of Rockwell’s most iconic images of the Civil Rights Movement, The Problem We All Live With, is also on display.
Contemporary Artwork
The exhibition concludes with a section of artworks and social commentary by contemporary artists responding to themes of freedom and American identity. The 2015 painting, Freedom from What? (I Can’t Breathe) by artist Maurice “Pops” Peterson will likely prompt discourse due to its relevance today. Peterson’s take on Rockwell’s Freedom from Fear, explores the idea that not all American families enjoy the privilege of safety, and depicts a newspaper headline with the words “I Can’t Breathe,” spoken by Eric Garner, a Black man killed during an interaction with New York police in 2014.
Richard Calvocoressi narrates a tour of an exhibition of new paintings by Georg Baselitz in San Francisco, describing the visual effect of these luminous compositions and explaining their relationship to earlier works by the artist: http://on.gagosian.com/4lzd0i9
Georg Baselitz (born 23 January 1938) is a German painter, sculptor and graphic artist. In the 1960s he became well known for his figurative, expressive paintings. In 1969 he began painting his subjects upside down in an effort to overcome the representational, content-driven character of his earlier work and stress the artifice of painting. Drawing from myriad influences, including art of Soviet era illustration art, the Mannerist period and African sculptures, he developed his own, distinct artistic language.
On this episode of Art Institute Essentials Tour, take a closer look at City Landscape, painted by Joan Mitchell in 1955. “I paint a little, then I sit and look at the painting, sometimes for hours. Eventually, the painting tells me what to do.” In City Landscape, a tangle of various colors—pale pink, scarlet, mustard, sienna, and black—evoke the streets of a bustling metropolis. The spontaneous energy conveyed in the composition is at odds with Mitchell’s slow and deliberate process.
The motifs of Thöny’s art are informed by the pervasive unease of the interwar years, whose apprehensions he portrayed in the grotesque and nightmarishly somber drawings he created around 1920 for his unpublished Buch der Träume (Book of Dreams). Other works, however, render serene and idyllic landscapes and urban views as well as scenes from social life.
Wilhelm Thöny (1888 Graz, AT—1949 New York, US) was a restless cosmopolitan and indefatigable networker whose peripatetic career took him far beyond Austria’s borders. A cofounder of the Secession in his native Graz, he made friends along the way—he spent time in Munich and Paris, on the Côte d’Azur and in New York, among other places—but zealously guarded his creative independence, building an oeuvre that did not align with any of the major tendencies of the period.
The Museum der Moderne Salzburg’s first exhibition devoted to Thöny’s oeuvre since 2010 presents around two hundred works from the museum’s own collection. One highlight in the show are the (letter) illustrations in the artist’s Scrap Book from the 1930s. Observations from everyday life captured with lighthearted humor are interspersed between reflections on the increasingly oppressive political situation. It is the first time that this body of work, which is of outstanding value both for its artistic quality and as a document of its time, is shown in its entirety in Salzburg.
In this week’s episode of “Cocktails with a Curator,” decipher the significance of the many fascinating elements that compose the other large allegorical painting by Paolo Veronese at the Frick, “Choice Between Virtue and Vice,” with Deputy Director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon. The program is paired with a Negroni Sbagliato, a twist on the cocktail from last week’s episode. Leave a comment below with your favorite detail!
This comprehensive study of Vincent van Gogh offers a complete catalogue of his 871 paintings, alongside writings and essays, charting the life and work of a master who continues to tower over art to this day.
Today, the works of Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) are among the most well known and celebrated in the world. In paintings such as Sunflowers, The Starry Night, and Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, we recognize an artist uniquely dexterous in the representation of texture and mood, light and place.
Yet in his lifetime, van Gogh battled not only the disinterest of his contemporary audience but also devastating bouts of mental illness. His episodes of depression and anxiety would eventually claim his life, when, in 1890, he committed suicide shortly after his 37th birthday.
Ingo F. Walther (1940–2007) was born in Berlin and studied medieval studies, literature, and art history in Frankfurt am Main and Munich. He published numerous books on the art of the Middle Ages and of the 19th and 20th centuries. Walther’s many titles for TASCHEN include Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Art of the 20th Century, and Codices illustres.
Rainer Metzger studied art history, history, and German literature in Munich and Augsburg. In 1994, he earned his Ph.D. on the subject of Dan Graham, and subsequently worked as a fine arts journalist for the Viennese newspaper Der Standard. He has written numerous books on art, including volumes on van Gogh and Chagall. Since 2004, he has worked as Professor of art history at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe.
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On this episode of Art Institute Essentials Tour, take a closer look at Bathers by a River, started by Henri Matisse in 1909 and completed in 1917. Henri Matisse originally painted this work as a pastoral scene, but over the next decade he transformed it into the cubist-inflected composition seen today. When the painting was acquired by the Art Institute in 1953, Matisse told the museum’s director that he viewed the painting as one of his five most pivotal works.
Henri Émile Benoît Matisse (1869 -1954) was a French artist, known for both his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
Japanese artist Maori Sakai creates humorous drawings with pen on paper, that are often animated. Each gif is rendered largely in pastels and captures simple movements: a record spinning on a turntable, rain falling outside a window, and butterflies hovering around hydrangeas. Many of Sakai’s short animations, in addition to glimpses into her process, can be found on Instagram and Tumblr.
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