It’s been an exciting week, and the results are finally in! This year’s juror, Mr. Bernard Hagedorn, selected 71 works to be included in the 43rd Annual Student Art Exhibition at the Swope. Selected entries, and awards given, may be found below the cut. This list is sorted by category, with awards appearing at the beginning of each category.
Annual Student Exhibition–Juror & Process
Once again the Swope Art Museum is proudly hosting the Annual Student Exhibition. An institution in itself, this exhibition has been recurring for forty-three years! That’s longer than any of the exhibiting students and most of the art teachers have been alive. And although the exhibition has been going on for so very long, we always get questions about how the works of art are chosen for this exhibition. Well, I’ll explain…
Mary Fairchild MacMonnies heads South
Mary Fairchild MacMonnies’ “Garden in Giverny” has gone out on loan for a three venue traveling exhibition.
The first object from the Swope Collection on loan for the 2010 exhibition season!
“Garden in Giverny” will travel with the exhibition “Impressionists in the Garden” to the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Art Museum, then to the Tampa Museum of Art , and finally to the Taft Museum of Art before returning home to the Swope.
companion looking
It is common to think of visiting an art museum as a solitary activity. And it can be conducive to quiet contemplation. However, as I found out a couple of days ago, viewing art with a group can focus your attention on things you might overlook on your own. For this months American Art 101 we looked at Etaples, France, 1911, by William E. Scott. Brian pointed out the peculiar vantage point of the painting. The boat, which dominates the scene, is seen from the back end looking in toward the village of Etaples. The boat appears to be beached at low tide. That would put the artist either in the water or on very wet sand at low tide. I really had not thought about that, the foreground is so sensuous with its flowing paint strokes that I must confess I had not noticed the boat was beached. I have seen many paintings of cities from across a body of water and numerous paintings of boats from the side, but this view point is unusual. Another thing I had not paid that much attention to was the difference between the foreground, (which had always caught my eye) made with broad bravura brush strokes and the background with its relatively finely blended clouds (which until now had evaded my attention.) So next time you visit bring someone along and try looking together.
hard work
Two days ago, when I was talking, or rather trying to talk, to a group of theater students, words just leaked out of my ears before they could reach my tongue. Talking and writing is hard work. At least for me. That reminds me of what Terre Haute sculptor, Janet Scudder, said about the job of modeling for artists. In her 1925 autobiography, Modeling My Life, talking about the late 1890s in Paris she said “And so far as the profession of posing being an easy one, any one who believes that should try sitting in one position without moving for an hour; he will soon come to the conclusion that he would rather do hard work–especially when he considers the small price paid to models, who, in those days, received only five or six francs for a sitting of four hours.”
- Janet Scudder, Frog Fountain, c. 1901, Swope # 1942.38
no favorites?
I often get the question- “What is your favorite work in the collection?” or people ask me to make a value judgment on a work. It is awkward and I usually come up with a lame and boring answer like “I love all my children equally.” It would be disingenuous to say I am never drawn to or repulsed by a work of art. However, in general, and here at work, I just do not think in terms of like and dislike good and bad. I am more likely to be thinking “how does this fit visually, thematically and historically with other works?” Now that being said, I will admit to a revolving fascination with various aspects of various works. For instance lately I have found myself staring at the muted brown mustard and other colors in the Moses Soyer painting Studio Interior with Figure. I can’t really say it is a favorite but something in those colors and their application keeps drawing me back.
In The News: 2 Nov 2009
From the Tribune Star Readers’ Forum: Nov. 2, 2009
Swope director helps students discover art
Recently, the sixth-grade art classes at West Vigo Middle School traveled to the Indianapolis Museum of Art for a field trip to discover art. This trip was special, as Brian Whisenhunt, director of the Swope Art Museum joined our group to help launch a “junior docent” program.
Our sixth graders were first treated to a tour of “Sacred Spain,” led by the IMA docents. History and art from the 1700s became alive, as we saw fabulous paintings depicting religious events and golden artifacts, including a crown dripping with hundreds of emeralds.
Andy Warhol: The Last Decade
There’s a great exhibit up at the Milwaukee Art Museum now through January 3 2010, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade. This is the first US museum show to look exclusively at the later works of Warhol, an era often overshadowed by the Marilyns, Maos and soup cans of his earlier career. This period marks a departure from the mass-production of the Factory for Warhol and a re-engagement hand-painting which he had retired from some 20 years earlier (“Painting was just a phase I went through,” he said in 1966). Warhol returned to painting during these years partly due to the influence of his friend Jean-Michel Basquiat and this show features some excellent collaborations between the two artists, including a favorite of mine, Arm And Hammer II.
Warhol produced more work during this period than any other time in his life and this show captures the wide range of his experimentations. It features his forays into abstraction, combinations of painting and screen-printing, numerous self-portraits, and engagements with religious iconography including the monumental Last Supper pieces, the final series of Warhol’s career.
Twin Cities Museums
From Saturday until Wednesday, I was in the Twin Cities at the Association of Midwest Museum annual conference held in St. Paul, MN. I met a lot of people, got several new ideas from other institutions and had a wonderful time exploring the various museums around the area. Some highlights:
Benton and Pollock
Visitors to the Swope admiring Thomas Hart Benton’s painting Threshing Wheat may be surprised to learn that the realist Benton was an influential mentor to abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock. An article in the Smithsonian describes their relationship a bit and brings up some interesting points about Pollock’s work.
The author of the article, Henry Adams, suggests that Pollock hid his name in the momentous 1943 work, Mural. Whether Mural is in fact based around Pollock’s name remains up for debate (I’m not sure I buy it myself), but the inherent structure and harmony Adams is honing in on does neatly illustrate a feature that many people, particularly those who are not fans of modern art, often overlook when considering Pollock’s work: it is, like Benton’s, highly structured and very carefully composed. Pollock himself said as much, “When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.”
Pollock has said that Benton gave him something to rebel against, but he also acknowledged Benton’s importance and role in the art world. As Adams states, “[Pollock] once told a friend that he wanted Mural to be comparable to a Benton work, though he didn’t have the technical ability to make a great realistic mural and needed to do something different.”
