The new exhibit at the Memorial Art Gallery explores the intersection of fine art, design, and the functional realm of craft, which has traditionally been (and in some ways still is) considered lower than the celebrated fine arts. Organized by the Museum of Arts and Design in New York City, the exhibit includes works by more than 170 artists pulled together to tell the aesthetic, industrial, and social story of 1945-1969, a span of time now dubbed Midcentury Modernism by the art world.
"Crafting Modernism" opened just a few weeks after the MAG's smaller Lockhart Gallery debuted "Modern Icon: The Machine as Subject in American Art." The latter exhibit explores early 20th century artists' responses to new industry and the manufacturing process, reflecting the trepidation and fascination Americans felt at the onset of mass production and the era of the machine. Though the dubious response to industrial alienation sparked a return to handmade industry, the era of the machine couldn't be held back, and Midcentury Modernism can be seen as a stepping stone between the handmade focus and the monstrous mass production of today.
The exhibition design for "Crafting Modernism" includes an open layout version of the Grand Gallery with a few free-standing walls. Low platforms showcase groupings of furniture, art objects, and wall pieces, some of them in living space-esque configurations, and are accompanied by panels with information on artists, artworks, and aspects of aesthetic shift.
Increased international interactions from air travel led to new multicultural influences on American craft aesthetic during the mid-20th century. The show exhibits colorful textile wall hangings in woven fibers or silk batik. Sheila Hicks's "The Principal Wife" from 1965 is a large wall piece suspended from a rod, with dull fibers grouped thickly and wrapped and bound with colorful fibers, the work seeming to embody the most honored, ornamented lady of a polygamist house. Old traditions meet new materials in Kay Skeimachi's intricate 1968 "Nagare III," in which black nylon monofilament is woven into a long series of panels that are wound together and draped from the ceiling in an elegant, organic column.
Multicultural influence on the art didn't always hail from abroad, and as Native Americans attended art schools, their work became modern while retaining elements of tradition in silver adornments and other objects. This is seen in the 1968 "Bowl with Feather Design" by Maria Martinez and her son, Popovi Da. The glazed terracotta black-on-black form has a razor-sharp feather pattern within the interior.
Just the range of creative works of seating included in the exhibit is enough to keep viewers transfixed. J.B. Blunk's conceptual 1968 "Scrap Chair" is a legless throne that looks like a well-arranged pile of cypress wood with a high back. The artist used a chainsaw to carve it from random leftover wood, making the work a jumble of rough, angular planes. Thomas Lynn's 1968 aluminum "Chair with Back" has a low swoop of a seat on a tripod, with a high narrow back like a spinal column, shaped like a hip joint at top, textured and pitted, organic and low shine.
Eames furniture is not excluded - Charles and Ray's 1960 "Stool," designed for Herman Miller Furniture Co., is a small and simple thread-spool-shaped seat of luscious wood. Evert Sodergren's 1953 "Sculptured Chair" of sleek walnut and black leather has a low, slightly reclined, wide seat and back rest, and cuts a very organic shape. These objects of high design were often paired with colorful, one-off, rougher-hewn, and often folksy objects of art to warm up the space with texture and hue.
Prior to World War II, Biomorphism - a style characterized by undulating lines and curved forms that mimicked nature and the human body - was an important aspect of abstract painting and sculpture. By the late 1940's, it became an element of design. To illustrate this, the exhibit features Wendell Castle's 1964 "Music Rack," an oak tripod and spine, with the book support resembling a row of ribs. Leza McVey's 1951 "Ceramic Form No. 33, 34" is an animal duo of black bulky stoneware, each on a tripod of stubby legs.
A sizeable portion of the show is dedicated to fantastic works from the American Studio Jewelry movement. There are a range of works, from stark and abstract, to busy, massive pendants, to Merry Renk's unique 1968 "?White Cloud' Wedding Crown." The tiny diadem features four tiers of small ladle-shaped gold plates in interlocking rings; between the top two tiers are fine branches of gold wire capped with tiny cultured pearls. Ken Cory's 1967 "Tongue" is a small silver brooch with an amber cabochon and plump leather form hanging down, a slightly racy and risque work that teases and mocks viewers.
"By the end of the 1960's, artists working in crafts materials had completely blurred the lines between craft and art," explains one info card. We see craft's shift further from its functional roots in H.C. Westermann's 1964 "Secrets," a small American walnut-and-brass chest with hinges and keyholes in two opposite sides, making it both irresistible and yet impossible to open. Similarly useless, Claes Oldenburg's whimsical and surreal 1963 "Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwhich)" is a vinyl, sagging stack about the size of side table, with an olive cap and stabbed through with a stake-like toothpick.
Influence of society's increased experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs is suggested in trippy works such as Wendell Castle's 1969 "Benny Lamp," a groovy green fiberglass arch with a garish glowing neon accent. Other works commented outright on recreational drug use, including Richard Marquis's 1969-70 "American Acid Capsule with Cloth Container," a glass American flag-patterned oversized pill form, with matching bag.
The exhibit wouldn't be an honest reflection of the late part of the Modernist era if it didn't include artists' empathetic or vitriolic reactions to key social and political conflicts, including the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. William Wyman's 1962 "Homage to Robert Frost" is a large stoneware vessel with the poet's we're-doomed "Fire and Ice" poem carved into the surface. Tapestries and screen prints bear images of politicians and musicians of the times with clashing ideas about the world.
William Clarke's 1969 "Police State Badge" is a simple sterling silver and 14K gold traditional sheriff's badge with "Police State" printed upon it. The stark decals in Howard Kottler's 1967 porcelain plate, "Peacemakers," leave a little room for interpretation, with a center stripe of the Capitol Building repeated over and over again, ringed with guns aiming inward, the words "peace" and "peacemakers" blasting forth from the barrels.
The flip side of the rebellious human spirit is seen in a small section on items created for religious ritual or with a religious aspect, including altar vessels, textiles, and a Torah crown. The post-WWII growth in church and synagogue construction led religious organizations to patronize craftspeople as they always have, throughout the long centuries, and religious objects were recast in a contemporary idiom, catching up with the new aesthetics. One of the most striking works in the section is sympathetic toward lost cultures and forgotten, close-to-the-Earth modes of living. Robert Sperry's 1962 "Totem Crying for Lost Memory" is a stoneware vessel with a textured slab for a face capped with horns, and an open mouth captured, silently keening.
"Crafting Modernism: Midcentury American Art and Design"
Through May 20
Memorial Art Gallery, 500 University Ave.
$5-$12 | 276-8900, mag.rochester.edu
Wed-Sun 11 a.m.-5 p.m., Thu 11 a.m.-9 p.m.
Source: http://www.rochestercitynewspaper.com/entertainment/art/2012/02/ART-Crafting-Modernism-at-MAG/
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