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Displaying items by tag: urban
The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents the exhibition Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis, an interdisciplinary show that sheds new light on the experimental decade of the 1920s in Paris. During that time, Fernand Léger, a French modernist painter, played an important role in redefining painting by engaging with the urban environment as well as mass media.
The cornerstone of the exhibition will be Léger’s The City (1919), which is also a pivotal part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection. The show will include other works by the artist that explore the city theme as well as film projections, theater designs, architectural models, and print and advertising designs by Léger as well as his contemporaries including Piet Mondrian, Le Corbusier and Many Ray.
Léger: Modern Art and the Metropolis, presents over 120 works, including loans from American and European public and private collections. The exhibition will be on view through January 5, 2014.
American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 17, 2013. The exhibition will draw from MoMA’s extensive collection of American art made between 1915 and 1950. Using some of the finest paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures from the period, American Modern will illustrate the evolution of society and culture during the first half of the 20th century.
Subjects explored in the exhibition will include urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still lifes and portraiture. Works by modern art masters such as George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz and Andrew Wyeth will be arranged thematically.
American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe will be on view at MoMA through January 26, 2014.
The Middlebury College Museum of Art in Middlebury, VT is currently exhibiting a selection of rare watercolors and drawings of Vermont by the American painter Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Best known for his depictions of urban and rural life in America, Hopper’s paintings of Vermont are not widely known and many of them have not been on public view in nearly 50 years. Edward Hopper in Vermont, which was assembled from museums and private collections, marks the first time Hopper’s Vermont works have been displayed together in their home state.
Hopper, and his wife Jo, a fellow artist who was also his model, muse, and lifelong travel companion, made five trips to Vermont during the summers between 1927 and 1938. Hopper’s early paintings from these trips depict Vermont’s most recognizable scenery – rolling green hills dotted with bright red barns and dramatic distant peaks. His later paintings focus on the White River Valley and its vast meadows, wide pastures, and everyday roadside scenes. These works are a departure from Hopper’s usual style as they lack any architectural form or signs of human presence.
Edward Hopper in Vermont will be on view at the Middlebury College Museum of Art through August 11, 2013.
Hopper Drawing, which opens today, May 23, 2013 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, is the first major museum exhibition to focus on the drawings and creative process of Edward Hopper (1882-1967). Known for his enigmatic renderings of rural and urban American life, Hopper’s paintings of seascapes, cityscapes, and their inhabitants are some of the most significant artworks of the 20th century.
The Whitney’s exhibition is not just a presentation of Hopper’s best-known works; it is a rare glimpse into the creative process that produced one of the most lauded oeuvres in modern art. Hopper’s drawings illustrate his ever-changing relationships with his subjects, which include the street, the movie theater, the office, the bedroom, and the road. Drawn from the Whitney’s remarkable Hopper collection, which includes 2,500 drawings given to the museum by the artist’s widow, Josephine, Hopper Drawing includes drafts of some of Hopper’s most recognized works alongside their oil painting counterparts. Works on view include Early Sunday Morning (1930), New York Movie (1939), Office at Night (1940), and Nighthawks (1942) together with their prepatory drawings and related works. The exhibition also includes pioneering archival research into the buildings and urban spaces that inspired Hopper’s work.
Drawing Hopper will be on view at the Whitney through October 6, 2013.
The Art Institute of Chicago announced that they have acquired Thomas Hart Benton’s (1889-1975) Cotton Pickers (1945), a critical example of American Regionalism, a realist modern art movement that gained popularity during the 1930s. Regionalist artists forsook urban life in favor of creating scenes of everyday rural life in America. Benton was a pioneer of the movement and is considered a pivotal figure in American art.
Cotton Pickers is a rare example of Benton’s large-scale paintings and it is the first oil painting by the artist to enter the museum’s collection. It will bolster the Art Institute’s world-renowned collection of paintings from the period, which includes Grant Wood’s (1891-1942) iconic painting American Gothic (1930) and John Steuart Curry’s (1897-1946) Hogs and Rattlesnakes (1930). The addition of Cotton Pickers helps the Art Institute tell the story of Regionalism more fully. Judith Barter, the Field-McCormick Chair and Curator in the American Art Department, considers the painting one of the museum’s most important acquisitions in the last several decades.
Cotton Pickers will be exhibited alongside American Gothic and Hogs and Rattlesnakes.
Fine Lines: American Drawings from the Brooklyn Museum is now on view at the Brooklyn Museum in New York. The exhibition presents over 100 drawings and sketchbooks from the museum’s collection, many of which have rarely been seen.
Fine Lines features works created between 1768 and 1945 and includes drawings by more than 70 artists such as John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), Stuart Davis (1892-1964), Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), William Glackens (1870-1938), Marsden Hartley (1877-1943), Winslow Homer (1836-1910), Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Eastman Johnson (1824-1906), Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), William Merritt Chase (1849-1916), and John Singer Sargent (1856-1925).
Fine Lines is organized into six categories and draws connections between artists from varying periods and artistic styles. Topics explored in the six sections are portraiture; the nude; the clothed figure; narrative subjects; natural landscapes; urban landscapes; and conservation techniques.
Fine Lines will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum through May 26, 2013.
Thomas Hart Benton’s (1889-1975) epic mural, America Today (1930-31) has found a new home at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. A sweeping panorama of American life, the work once lined a boardroom at the International-Style New School for Social Research on West 12th Street, which was designed by the Austrian architect, Joseph Urban (1872-1933).
The 10-panel mural, which was Benton’s first major commission, ushered in a new approach to mural painting, turning to the reality of everyday life for inspiration. America Today portrays American life prior to the Great Depression and features the flappers, farmers, steel workers, and stock market moguls that are readily associated with the period. The mural remains Benton’s best-known work and a masterpiece of modern art.
Benton, an American realist painter, drew inspiration for the mural from his travels around the United States in the 1920s. A glimpse into both rural and urban life at the time, America Today portrays the wealthy and poor as well as the progressive and traditional ideals that defined the era. While Benton did not receive a fee for the commission, the work opened the door for future commissions and helped inspire the Works Progress Administration mural programs that were implemented in the late 1930s.
Bought by the insurance company, AXA Equitable, nearly 30 years ago, America Today was in storage before the decision to donate the work was made. However, the Met is currently without extra exhibition space and the mural won’t be on view until at least 2015 when the museum takes over the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue. The Whitney is headed to its own larger space in the meatpacking district. America Today is the first artwork that Met officials have confirmed for the Breuer building.
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