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Forum: Mel Bochner Photographs, 1966–69
October 12 – January 12, 2003
Mel Bochner (b. 1940) is known primarily as one of the
founders of Conceptual Art, a movement whose practitioners emphasize the
idea behind the art rather than its physical nature of the work or its
aesthetic. In 1966, Bochner began
creating small structures out of wooden blocks and photographing them. He was less intrigued by the final shape
than by the process of imposing, impermanently, a certain order. “For him,” writes Curator Scott Rothkopf,
who organized this exhibition for the Harvard University Art Museums, “they
were not to be seen as autonomous sculpture, so much as the individual
steps in a larger serial process.”
Through photography, Bochner was able to capture the structures
while minimizing their “physicality.” For three years, he explored the
ramifications of this process.
While the earlier photographs in this exhibition deal largely
with the mathematical ideas behind the work, Bochner also examined such
principles as scale, perspective, color, and texture. In later works, Bochner cut the edges of
the photographs to correspond with the edges of the object photographed. He then backed the photograph with
masonite, making the picture project into the room.
Subsequently in the late 1960s, Bochner’s investigations
exploited new technologies that allowed him to subject clear substances to
polarized light, take brightly colored and garishly lit cibachromes, and
shoot photographs from television screens.
At a time when photography was not widely accepted as fine art,
Bochner used this medium to test the boundaries between the idea of a piece
and its physical execution.
The exhibition includes approximately 35 photographs from this
period in Bochner’s career. As
Rothkopf writes, “Unlike many exhibitions of Conceptual Art in which
photography serves as a document for actions requiring lengthy label
descriptions, Bochner’s pieces have immediate impact and visual
appeal. Further, they demand museum
viewing, given their often large-scale and highly polished formal
clarity.”
Bochner eventually turned away from the camera toward other
works on paper, as well as installations, but his experiences with photography
informed his work for more than three decades.
Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and
Design of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates
November 9, 2002 –
February 3, 2003
Heinz Architectural
Center
When Robert Venturi was awarded the Pritzker Prize in 1991,
the jury wrote, “He has expanded and redefined the limits of the art of
architecture in this century, as perhaps no other has through his theories
and built works.” Venturi is widely credited with changing the course of
architecture by rejecting Modernism and finding both honesty and beauty in
ordinary buildings.
Venturi graduated from Princeton University in 1947 and earned
a graduate degree there in 1950. He
worked in the office of Eero Saarinen, and his first built project that
captured the attention of the architectural community was a house (begun in
1959) he designed for his mother in the Chestnut Hill section of
Philadelphia.
Denise Scott Brown, Venturi’s wife,
has been a partner in the firm since 1969, as well as Venturi’s
collaborator in the evolution of architectural theory and design. As
partners they are known for their emphasis on social conditions and ethical
considerations relating to urban planning and their belief that architects
should respect the realities of people’s lives.
The firm has been recognized for the
playfulness and iconoclasm of their projects; it was Venturi who responded
to Mies van der Rohe’s famous modernist rule, “Less is more,” with “Less is
a bore.”
Out of
the Ordinary was organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and is the
first retrospective of Venturi and Scott Brown’s work. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully
illustrated catalogue and will include more than 150 drawings, models,
photographs, and decorative arts objects, ranging from Venturi’s first
commissions in 1958 to the firm’s most recent projects.
Guests at the annual Founder-Patrons
Day celebration on November 7 will have an opportunity to preview the
exhibition while enjoying cocktails and dinner in the Hall of
Sculpture. The evening begins with
cocktails at 6:00 and dinner at 7:30. To receive an invitation, call
412.578.2552.
Recent
Acquisitions
Eugène
Isabey
French,
1803–1886
The Shipwreck, late 1830s
Oil on
canvas
Major
Paintings Acquisition Fund, 2002.11
After
seeing Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa
in 1819, the young Eugène Isabey began making regular trips to the Normandy
coast to study the sea. Within 10
years, Isabey’s marine paintings were winning recognition at the Paris
Salon, and his style was becoming more fluid and spontaneous.
The
depiction of people battling the elements and losing was a popular Romantic
theme, and Isabey had many models working in this genre who influenced him,
including Turner, Delacroix, and Rembrandt.
In this painting, the influence of Gericault may be easily seen, not
only in subject matter, but also in the way the painting’s structure is
based on a rhythmically repeated pyramidal shape.
“In
works such as The Shipwreck,”
says Louise Lippincott, curator of fine arts, “Isabey is revealed at his
most dramatically experimental and advanced. Here an intensely Romantic theme is
expressed in a vigorous, broken technique that reinforces the crisis and
essence of his subject and represents a vital link between the art of the
early 19th century and the beginnings of Impressionism.”
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