Virtual Art in Bloom

Shiva Nataraja, Lord of the Dance. I used the exotic proteas as his body. The curly willow, hypericum (berries), eryngium (purple-green spike flowers) and peace lily leaves represent his grace and skill keeping creation and destruction in balance.

Becky Haaf

Religion: NT. Purification of the temple. Christ driving the money-changers from the temple with a whip.

Christ’s expulsion of the money changers who were desecrating the temple in Jerusalem was a popular theme in Italy in this period. To Catholics, the image symbolized the purification of the Church through internal reform and the expulsion of Protestant heretics. El Greco depicts a chaotic swirl of figures writhing in pain around Christ, who solemnly and calmly wields a scourge to rid the temple of greed and sin.

A native of Crete, the artist became known as “El Greco” (the Greek) after moving to Italy in 1567, but his full signature in Greek letters appears here on the step below Christ. Set in a grand architectural interior, the scene reflects El Greco’s experiments with Italian linear perspective and break from the Byzantine style he employed in the Greek icons painted in his youth. In the lower-right corner, El Greco portrayed four artists: Titian, Michelangelo, Giulio Clovio (a miniaturist and manuscript illuminator), and Raphael. Clovio had secured lodgings for El Greco in Rome at the Palazzo Farnese, a grand Renaissance palace belonging to the illustrious Farnese family. In a gesture of friendship, El Greco included Clovio in the painting alongside the three masters of the Italian Renaissance he wished to emulate. El Greco likely painted this work right after moving to Rome from Venice in late 1570. He eventually settled in Spain in 1577.

Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple

Historical. Charles I, King of England. A helmeted Britannia, wearing violet drapery, holds steady the golden crown which England and Scotland, in red and yellow draperies, suspend above the head of the Infant Charles I. Two putti above support an escutcheon with the arms of the United Kingdom lightly indicated, and a putto below holds a torch to a heap of armor, spears, and dull red banners which the union makes no longer necessary.

King Charles I of England (reigned 1625–49) commissioned Rubens to decorate the ceiling of the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace, in London. The vast canvases celebrate the Stuart monarchy and the reign of Charles’s father, King James VI of Scotland, who became James I of England and Ireland in 1603, succeeding Queen Elizabeth I. This oil sketch represents Charles as a child, a young prince embodying the union. Crowning him are three women: personifications of England (in red) and Scotland (in yellow) and the Roman goddess of wisdom and war, Minerva. Above them, two cherubs hold the royal coat of arms.

The Union of England and Scotland (Charles I as the Prince of Wales)

Found in a temple near Pondicherry. The figure represents cosmic activity. The significance of the gestures is as follows the drum in the right hand signifies creation; the fire in the upper left hand, destruction; the abaya (fear not) position of the lower right hand, protection; the position of the raised left foot, salvation; the foot placed on the prostrate dwarf, Apasmarapurusa, removal of illusion/ignorance.

The Hindu god Shiva appears in several incarnations. Here, Shiva appears as Nataraja, or Lord of the Dance. He raises his left foot in a graceful dance pose. In his upper right hand, Nataraja holds a drum, the sound of which manifests creation. The flame that he holds in his upper left hand symbolizes destruction. Together, they symbolize the creation and destruction of the cosmic universe. The posture of the icon’s lower left and right palms signifies protection. The foot that rests on the demon’s back symbolizes the elimination of ignorance, while the raised left foot signifies salvation. A now missing ring of fire, symbolic of the simultaneous and continuous creation and destruction of the universe, would have encircled the bronze icon.

Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the Dance)

Guardian of one of the quarters of the Buddhist heaven. Glazed pottery tomb figure, one of a pair, dressed in armor and standing on a kneeling bull. A fine blue predominates in color scheme, with details in white, brown, mottled green and yellow. Elements of Sassanian design appear on the armor. Head, phoenix headdress, and hands unglazed.

Tomb retinue

Landscape. Chestnut trees. Impressionism.

This painting represents an avenue on the grounds of Paul Cézanne's family estate in southern France in Aix-en-Provence. In this view, he carefully recorded the color and light of the wintry scene, with its tracery of bare branches against the sky. To create an ordered pictorial design, he selected this particular view, emphasizing its rigorous horizontal and vertical structures. In depicting the chestnut trees, he employed multiple viewpoints; this collapses depth, meshing the two parallel rows of trees into a web that seems to exist in one plane. This characteristic innovation produced a rhythmic synthesis of form in both two and three dimensions.

Chestnut Trees at Jas de Bouffan

Landscape of grove of olive trees and their cast shadows in foreground, mountain looms in background, intense sun and dazzling light dominates the sky. No signature.

This is one of fifteen canvases of olive trees that van Gogh executed between June and December of 1889. Earlier that year he had interned himself in the asylum of St-Paul, in the town of St-Rémy in southern France, where he would create his most profound works. The vibrant oranges and yellows suggest that the picture dates to the autumn months. Van Gogh left St-Rémy in May 1890, moving to Auvers, near Paris, where he continued to paint until his death by suicide in July.

Olive Trees

False door in the name of Iry-en-Akhet whose "beautiful name" is Iry.

A false door, built into the west wall of the tomb chapel, was the focal point of the cult of the deceased in ancient Egypt. This was the interface between the world of the living and the world of the dead, where visitors came to say prayers and deposit offerings for the spirit of the deceased, whose soul could pass through the door. The inscriptions on this door commemorate the priest Iryenakhet (year-ee-en-AH-ket), who is depicted seven times. The central niche is framed by two door jambs and a lintel in a composition ruled by symmetry. The normal direction of Egyptian writing was from right to left, with the hieroglyphs facing right, but here the hieroglyphs on the right jamb face left (as do the figures), toward the niche.

False door

In 1912, Pierre Bonnard bought a country house called Ma Roulotte ("My Caravan") at Vernonnet, a small town on the Seine. This painting shows the dining room there, with cats perching on the chairs and Marthe de Méligny, the artist's wife, leaning on the windowsill. Bonnard, who considered himself "the last of the Impressionists," emphasized the expressive qualities of bright colors and loose brushstrokes in this picture. He united the interior with the exterior through the open window and door, and linked the forms by bathing them in related hues. Unlike the Impressionists, however, Bonnard painted entirely from memory. And like the Symbolists, he wanted his works to reflect his subjective response to the subject.

Dining Room in the Country

abstracted sea scape in greens, blues, dark orange and white

For Emil Nolde the sea was a primal force—beautiful, awe-inspiring, bountiful, frightening, unpredictable, untamable. He portrayed it in varying moods, from placid to stormy. In Heavy Seas at Sunset, dilute paint, dripping and pooling, outpaced the artist’s brush, so that nature itself collaborated in the making of this work. The paint stains the translucent Asian paper as much as it coats it, resulting in a range of tints from diaphanous to richly opaque. Nolde’s awareness of texture is evident in the froth on the nearest wave, where sinuous paper fibers describe the spray.

Heavy Seas at Sunset

Philip Guston began his career as a painter for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the government-supported program that helped support arts and culture during the Depression years. Guston's contributions to public art during these years reflected his knowledge of Renaissance figurative painting and his interest in socially realistic subject matter. 

Today Guston is renowned for the highly original figurative art he created later in his career. However, he made a surprising and brilliant detour into abstraction during the 1950s. Long attracted to European painting of the 16th - 17th centuries, it was during a visit to Italy in the late 1940s that he immersed himself in the painterly work of the Baroque period. Studying its celebration of color, gesture, and movement, Guston felt that he could finally reconcile his interest in recognizable form with his impulse toward pure expression.  

Although we don't know for sure if Guston studied the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens, such as the one installed on the opposite wall, he most likely saw the European master's work while traveling in Europe. The similarities of color and structure between the Guston and Rubens paintings on view here are striking, as is their shared emphasis on movement, sensuality, and metamorphosis.

Bronze

The human figure was Francis Bacon's principal object of study throughout his career.  This picture belongs to a series of eight paintings, which began as a portrait of Bacon's friend and biographer David Sylvester but became, in the final project, studies of a seated pope. Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge's sequential photos of the human body in movement, Bacon made his figures more and more agititated until, in the final painting, the pope is convulsive. Here his ambiguous facial expression rests somewhere between the grimace of Portrait V and the horrific scream of Portrait VII.

This painting is one of the first Francis Bacon paintings acquired by an American museum.

Study for Portrait VI

Coin silver tea service, Federal Style, consisting of teapot and lid, stand for teapot, tea caddy with hinged lid, fitted with lock and key, stand for teacaddy, covered sugar urn, cream pitcher, shell-shaped tea scoop, tea or punch strainer, pair of sugar tongs with shell-shaped ends; fluted design with engraved and pricked swags and medallions containing the monogram of John and Mehitable Templeman and all bearing Revere hall mark; teaspoons

The most complete Revere service known, this set of which this teapot is a part was made for a Boston merchant and his wife, John and Mehitable Templeman.  It includes one of only two tea caddies made by Revere.  The locked boxes held loose tea, an expensive and fashionable commodity.  The shell-shaped spoon was used for measuring tea and the sieve was used for straining punch, a beverage often served along with tea.  The second stand may have been used as a tray for spoons.  The accompanying teaspoons have only recently been reunited with this service.

Teapot, from a tea service

head and upper torso of nude woman who looks down to PL in red

In Paris, where he moved in 1906 from his native Italy, Amedeo Modigliani stood out from the ebullient avant-garde with his mysterious, long-necked portraits—paintings of arresting solemnity. From 1911 to 1913, he explored stone sculpture, creating a series of geometric heads inspired by African masks. Poor health forced him to abandon the labor of direct carving, but the feel and gesture of sculpting resurfaced in Female Bust in Red, along with memories of a much earlier art. Here the forms are condensed into solid blocks, and the vigorous brushstrokes seem to mimic the chisel’s blows. The head bows with silent elegance in a modern echo of Gothic Sienese paintings depicting the Virgin Mary.

Female Bust in Red

Head of a Woman

Geometric motifs with red yellow black and blue

Like many artists living in Paris in 1912, Piet Mondrian experimented with Cubism—depicting a subject from multiple viewpoints at once, often creating a fractured and disjointed image. After returning to Holland in 1914, he developed his own brand of abstraction, reducing natural forms to simplified geometric patterns. Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian eventually abandoned recognizable subjects even as a starting point, adopting instead a rational and intellectual style that he called Neo-Plasticism.

Composition with Blue, Red, Yellow, and Black

In Greek mythology, Ganymede was cupbearer to the gods, serving them with nectar and ambrosia. As a young prince of Troy, he was abducted by Zeus, ruler of the gods, and carried off to Mount Olympus, the gods’ home, where he became immortal.

An admirer of Greek and Roman art, Bertel Thorvaldsen was one of the foremost neoclassical sculptors of the 1800s. At the age of only eleven, he was accepted into the Royal Danish Academy of Art. In 1797 the excellence of his artwork earned him a royal stipend that enabled him to study in Rome, where he spent a large part of his career.

Ganymede and the Eagle

This landscape evokes Biblical stories of the Apocalypse, which foretold Christ's second coming. In the foreground, a woman in blue kneels before a tall figure with streaming golden hair, possibly Christ, while in the background two horsemen of the Apocalypse vault a fence.

As a pioneer of abstract painting, Vassily Kandinsky thought art could make inner truths visible. An "improvisation," he said, was "a largely unconscious, spontaneous expression of inner character," or "non-material (i.e., spiritual) nature." Kandinsky wanted painting to function like music, using colors and forms like melodies and rhythms—abstractly—to summon emotion.

Frame: Gift of Galerie Thomas, Munich, Germany.

Study for Improvisation V

Benedetto was the youngest of the Ghirlandaio brothers, an established family workshop in late Quattrocento Florence. In the years 1486-1493 he sought new opportunities in France. His only documented work is a Nativity in the church of Aigueperse (Auvergne), where the painter worked for the governor Gilbert de Bourbon-Montpensier and his wife Chiara Gonzaga, daughter of Marquis Federico of Mantua. This portrait aligns so perfectly with the stylistic characteristics of the signed painting that its attribution to Benedetto cannot be doubted. There is no clue, however, as to the identity of the sitter—surely a lady of the highest social strata, considering the golden-bordered dress, the precious necklace, and the fine lace that protects the neckline, delicately forming the shape of a bird. The delicate bird seen in the pattern of the lace may be a family emblem and thus could provide a clue to the woman’s identity. The fashionable shaved forehead and the pale complexion are also marks of a privileged life. The eyes are modestly downcast, as appropriate for respectable women. This is the kind of wife any Renaissance man would have been happy to marry. A lady like this would have stored her linens, jewels and garments in beautifully decorated chests in her bedroom.

Portrait of a Lady

In 1967, Frank Stella began a series of brightly colored paintings based on the protractor, a drafting tool used for measuring and making angles. With this device he made three semicircular designs including the one you see here, called the “rainbow.” These designs are the basis for the many paintings in his Protractor series. Stella titled the works after circular cities and archaeological sites he saw on a 1963 trip to the Middle East: Tahkt-i-Sulayman is an ancient shrine in Iran’s Azerbaijan province. But Stella has insisted that the meaning of his work is purely formal: “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object...You can see the whole idea without any confusion. What you see is what you see.”

Tahkt-I-Sulayman Variation II

Morrison,'Collage IX Landscape',wood,U.S.XXc

George Morrison let serendipity play a role in his wood collage. Inspired by Lake Superior’s North Shore, he scoured beaches on the East Coast and elsewhere for his materials, viewing what he found as gifts yielded by the waters. Following his strong feeling for landscape, he placed a horizon line about a quarter of the way down from the top. Space left between the pieces of wood gives the illusion of a carved line, which lends a sculptural quality. Morrison always insisted, however, that his collages are paintings made of wood.

Collage IX: Landscape

Joining the flight of artists from Paris to New York during World War II, Yves Tanguy emigrated to America in 1939. Considered to be Tanguy's finest work from his "first American period" of 1939 to 1945, the Institute's painting is characterized by bright colors and mysterious, biomorphic forms. In this surreal otherworldly landscape, Tanguy presents us with an ultra-realistic depiction of the unreal by employing a deliberate, precise method of painting.Inexplicable titles, often evocative of a dream state, were used by Surrealists to compel the viewer to search for a deeper meaning or truth in the artwork.

Through Birds, Through Fire but Not Through Glass

Georgia O‘Keeffe produced more than twenty scenes of New York City between 1925 and 1930. Here, the power and presence of the modern era are epitomized in the city’s thrusting architecture. During the first half of the 1900s, skyscrapers came to exemplify U.S. ingenuity. O’Keeffe reduced these immense buildings to simple geometric forms that converge in the upper reaches of the dark canvas, towering even above the moon. She places the viewer between these architectural giants. We might feel small in their midst, forced to crane our necks skyward to take it all in, or we might marvel at the staggering feats of engineering that soar above our heads. The brightly glowing moon offers a round contrast to the super-straight lines of the city.

City Night

Landscape. Painting is owned jointly by the MIA and the Des Moines Art Center

Grant Wood, born and raised in Iowa, was the foremost artist of the American Regionalist movement, which focused on the human condition and the values of a rural environment. This well-organized landscape, with its linear precision and repetition of forms, emphasizes the order and harmony of country life. A group of Iowa businessmen commissioned this painting to present to President Herbert Hoover, who was born in the white frame cabin situated immediately behind the two-story house in the middle of the scene. The president, who had stressed his humble origins during his campaign, refused the painting because the inclusion of the larger, later house obscured the cabin. Wood eventually sold it through a dealer.

The Birthplace of Herbert Hoover, West Branch, Iowa

jar, stoneware with underglaze iron-brown dragon motif

In addition to designs painted in cobalt blue, Korean potters between the 1600s and 1800s produced many porcelain objects decorated with underglaze iron brown-designs. Possibly because cobalt was an expensive material, blue-and-white vessels tend to be carefully painted. In contrast, Korean potters display a remarkable freedom in their iron-brown designs. Here, a dragon with a humorously long snout coils around the swelling sides of this robust jar.

American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) was well known for his love of Asian art. Wright once owned this jar and used it to decorate his suite at the Plaza Hotel in New York City.

Jar with Dragon and Clouds

Krishna stands on left and converses with Radha, who is seated at our right. They are located within an Islamicate court with a landscape in the background and lambs at the lower right.

The Rasikapriya (The Lovers Breviary), a late-sixteenth-century verse written in Hindi by the poet Keshavadasa, analyzes the stages of love through analogy with romantic incidents involving Radha and Krishna. This literary classic became a favorite source for court painting throughout the Hindu courts of Rajasthan. The allegorical union of Krishna, the Dark Lord, with his consort, Radha, was a popular subject in Rajput painting, especially among followers of the Vallabharya sect, who saw in this junction their own union with God. This scene, depicting the lovers in formal discussion rather than romantic embrace, most likely refers to Krishna, who, having spent the night elsewhere, makes amends to a scornful and incredulous Radha. Although Krishna's infidelity was not uncommon, the reconciliation of the divine lovers was inevitable.

Krishna and Radha

Blue-and-White dish, porcelain; decorated in a deep blue in the center with a large peahen flying amongst peonies, the cavetto molded with a band of peonies in white in a blue ground, the rim with a border of stylized waves and a molded foliated edge; the reverse has a typical wide unglazed base with a short foot ring and the exterior is decorated with a band of scrolling lotus

A peahen flies among peonies at the center of this large dish. Concentric bands of white peonies, stylized waves, a molded foliate edge, and a band of scrolling lotus emanate from the center. This magnificent plate was produced in the great ceramic town of Jingdezhen specifically for the Middle Eastern market, likely commissioned by Middle Eastern merchants who lived in China at this time and understood the ceramic needs and decorative taste of the Islamic countries. It was, for example, the custom to serve food from large plates in Islamic countries but not in China. Likewise, the foliate rim and the densely painted floral decor spoke to Middle Eastern aesthetic traditions.

Dish

Feather currency was made exclusively on Santa Cruz Island and traded from there to other islands in Melanesia. This kind of currency was manufactured by three skilled craftsmen, esteemed for their ability to communicate with the spirits. Each roll required feathers from about three hundred birds, and it was the job of the first specialist to collect red ones from scarlet honeyeaters. The second craftsmen glued the red feathers to gray ones taken from pacific pigeons, and then attached these to a long coil of twined fibers. The third artist wound the resulting belt in towards the middle, and provided finishing details, such as bark fibers, shells, seeds, and pieces of turtle shell.

Feather Currency (tevau)

Carleton Watkins spent considerable time in Yosemite Valley in the late 1800s, photographing its natural wonders. He worked both from the floor of the valley and from its peaks, producing breathtaking, large-scale images such as this one. Based in San Francisco, he focused largely on landscapes, and his artistry far exceeded the capabilities of most landscape photographers. In this image, he expertly created strong contrast between the silky-smooth water in the foreground and the heavily textured shore of pebbles directly beyond it. The reflections of the trees in the water add depth to the picture and introduce a hint of symmetry. Watkins effectively used atmospheric perspective to delineate a soft background of massive mountains, including Half Dome on the right. His immense wooden camera helped him produce a finished print graced with meticulous detail and a wide range of rich tones.

Distant View of the Domes, Yosemite Valley, California

House with Sunset is a perfect example of the cross-fertilization of styles that existed in Europe just before the First World War. In its strong composition and bold use of color, it shows the influence of German Expressionism, which Wach was exposed to after moving to Berlin from his native Austria in the early 1910s. The luminous colors and radiating light suggest the canvases of Robert Delaunay, whose color abstractions the artist saw on a trip to Paris in 1912. In addition to this, the hatched brushstrokes and vibrating energy of the air recall the paintings of the Italian Futurists. While Wach is not well-known in artistic circles, this luminous watercolor fits squarely into the internationalist tendencies that defined early 20th-century modernism.

House with Sunset

A long sampan with several figures on board, carved with elaborate details and with wave motifs around the base, fitted with teakwood stand with white jade birds inset in the wave carving.

This finely detailed pleasure boat is carved in perfect unison with its rosewood base, which captures the water flowers and aquatic birds and crustaceans of the lotus pond on which the craft is meant to sail. The great pleasure gardens of the Qing dynasty, such as the Summer Palace in Beijing, included extensive planted water courses that accommodated the boating parties of the aristocracy. This exquisite carving shows a group of boaters complete with potted plants and wicker picnic hampers. With its aristocratic theme, flawless white nephrite, and superb craftsmanship, it epitomizes the decorative tastes of the 1700s. The inscription carved along the front of the boat, Qianlong yuwan (For the amusement of the emperor Qianlong), indicates that the boat was created in an imperial workshop.

Pleasure Boat

Portrait of a woman. Dutch golden age. A lady about thirty-four years of age with her fair hair in curls, stands full length at her toilet table, almost facing the spectator. She has a book in one hand and holds up her skirt with the other. She wears a light blue satin dress embroidered with gold lace. On the table, which is covered with a Turkey carpet, are a mirror, a silver box, and a candlestick. A spaniel frisks at her feet.

We can now put a name to this face. For centuries, this painting was known simply as Portrait of a Woman. Recent research revealed her identity: Lucia Wijbrants, the wealthy widow of a Dutch cloth merchant. She stands at her dressing table, surrounded by her pricey possessions, while a frisky spaniel begs for attention. Lucia emerged from a variety of sources, including known portraits (of her and her husband) featuring similar likenesses and some of the same belongings pictured here. In fact, the bed behind her was previously owned by her husband’s first wife.

Portrait of Lucia Wijbrants

The Chicago Stock Exchange Building, for which these grilles were made, was one of Adler and Sullivan's last commissions before the firm dissolved in 1895.  The repeating motif of spheres on the arms of an X within ovals inside a circle is echoed in the frieze above the grille and in the overgrille.  Sullivan conceived this design as a series of "seed germs" bursting from their pods, an idea found in his prose poem "Inspiration" of 1886, in which he compared the metamorphosis of a seed into a plant to that of basic forms into a structure.

Pair of elevator grilles, frieze, and overgrille

Raised work (stumpwork) casket depicting the story of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus; Initialed 'BP' and dated 1662, worked in polychrome silk and metallic threads on white satin and decorated with seed pearls, English; Front King Ahasuerus presenting the royal scepter to Queen Esther; Back The hanging of Haman; Right side the search for a wife for King Ahasuerus; Left side Mordecai honored by Ahasuerus and paraded in royal regalia; Top King Ahasuerus, Queen Esther and Haman at dinner; The casket with two doors opening to reveal curious set of drawers with secret compartments; the top lifting to reveal a pink velvet interior fitted with two bottles, an inkpot and a pen tray, the back of this lid with brackets for a mirror that now is missing; a second lid at the top opening to reveal a shallow silk-lined tray. A 17th century oak box lined in marbled paper with replaced lock accompanies the casket (95.14cc Traveling Case for Stumpwork Casket); an itemized list of pieces and their dimensions is in the object file in the registration office. Surface ornamentation (Needlework)

Needlework has always been an important art form of England. In the 17th century, a unique style of raised work embroidery was developed and, in its most elaborate form, was used to pictorially embellish decorative boxes used to store one's personal treasures. These embroidered containers were considered so important that cabinet makers were commissioned to create protective carrying cases so they could be easily and safely moved while traveling.

 This piece, one of the finest of its kind, tells the Old Testament story of Queen Esther, whose intelligence and diplomacy saved her people from persecution. The box was added to the institute's collection on the occasion of Mary Ann Butterfield's retirement  to honor her work as the museum's textile conservator.

Embroidered Box

designed for Rockledge, the E. L. King House, Homer, MN (demolished 1987)

The coffee and tea service that Maher designed for Rockledge llustrates his adherence to the progressive idea of a unified interior.  Emblazoned on each piece, along with the King monogram, is the ubiquitous tiger lily, one of Maher's dominant motifs for the house.  The service also exhibits the trapezoidal dentils and flattened arch that Maher used as architectural detailing.  This set was custom-made by the Gorham Manufacturing Company as part of their exclusive "Martelé" line.  The hand-hammered surface (martelé means "hammered") is characteristic of Arts and Crafts metalwork of the period.

Coffee pot from the martelé coffee and tea service for Rockledge

In the 1930s, virtually every major surrealist artist championed the modified found object as the ultimate modern art form. This lobster telephone is one of six all white versions that Dali made in association with the pioneering British interior designer Syrie Maugham (1879-1955) for the home of the surrealist collector Edward James. 
This classic Surrealist piece was among the most desirable 1930s original objects still obtainable when it was acquired with museum funds in 1996. Very few of these imaginatively transformed household items remain, although several have been issued as editions. Potentially functional, four versions with red lobsters have survived as well.

Aphrodisiac Telephone

Background ecru; brushed large V--color red, yellow, blue, green, brown, purple, rose, orange, violet

For centuries painters and weavers have worked in close collaboration to create portable murals called tapestries. In the 20th century one of the most famous tapestry weaving centers was in the French town of Aubusson. Abstract expressionist painter Paul Jenkins frequently explores the nature of prismatic light and color, using competing hues to reinforce a feeling of movement, and his works have inspired weavers on more than one occasion. This piece, after Jenkin's painting Phenomenon: Peel of Bells Cross, captures not only the intensity of color but also the almost watery look of the application of the pigment on the original canvas. In addition to the change of scale, the use of the tapestry form adds a distinct feeling of softness to the energy of the line work.

Phenomenon Peel of Bells Cross

standing female figure with bare breasts, in contraposto pose; wearing tiered conical headdress with wheel on back, necklaces, bracelets, rings, heavy belt, gauzy form-fitting slacks, anklets; figure stands on a graduated base; PL arm down, PR hand upraised

Devotees of the Great Goddess understand her as a personification of supreme feminine power. In Tamil Nadu, her iconography is relatively consistent, although she might be called by different names depending on the form of Shiva she accompanies. Her right arm is positioned to hold a lotus or blue lily, her left hand rests gracefully at her side, and her sensuous figure is accentuated by the triple-bend stance. An image of Uma must be present at all temple ceremonies for Shiva, or else the ritual is incomplete.

Devi Uma Parameshvari, Great Goddess Uma

If Matisse’s still-life paintings from his early years in Nice are less abstract than those produced prior to and during World War I, they are more evocative. In fact, still-life became the perfect vehicle enabling Matisse to explore the role of ornament in his paintings as well as the wider role of decorative design central to Matisse’s painting at this time. Still Life with Pascal’s Pensées relates to several pictures that represent a section or corner of a room in which vases or Chinese ginger jars contain bouquets of anemones. The vibrant yet flat colors of these flowers became a leitmotif which energizes the surrounding space. The finished painting is a particularly concise and felicitous composition in which one of the classics of French literature features prominently.

Still Life with Pascal’s "Pensées"

In the 1930s, people gathered around the radio much like we gather around the television today. This radio was designed for stylish hotel lobbies, with its small receivers and speakers hidden behind a futuristic façade. Its round, streamlined shape was—and still is—a modernist departure from the usual boxy radio designs. Its massive size reminds us that the radio was once as much a piece of furniture as a source of news and entertainment.

"Nocturne" radio

Under the Wave off Kanagawa is among the strongest images in Hokusai’s famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, and it has become an artistic icon, known around the world. Hokusai’s greatest rival, Utagawa Hiroshige, who specialized in views of famous places (meisho-e), criticized Hokusai’s unconventional compositions as too artificial. Certainly this image is the most extreme example of Hokusai’s unusual approach.
Mount Fuji appears smaller here than in most of the series’ other images. The great wave, arching over the view of the distant mountain, dominates the composition. In fact, Fuji is nearly eclipsed and might even be overlooked by a casual viewer. As if to prevent that, Hokusai designed the curling foam of the wave so as to lead the viewer’s gaze toward the far-off sacred mountain. Three boats, tossed by the waves, symbolize the inconsequence of humankind in relation to the power and majesty of nature.

Under the Wave off Kanagawa

music sheet with inset standing figure with the world against red ground at UL with L and bottom borders painted decoratively; recto elaborate historiated initial 'I' God created the world; also border decoration with dragon and bird

The decorated letter "I" shows Christ pointing to a disk-shaped mappa mundi (map of the world), a medieval representation of the then known lands, encircled by the ocean. The image is apt, for this "I" introduces the phrase In principio fecit deus celum et terram (In the beginning God made heaven and earth), with which the book of Genesis opens. The musical notation—neumes (square notes) marked on a four-line staff—is typical of Gregorian plainchant, liturgical music that developed in the Western Church beginning in the 8th century. A leafy scroll climbs the border, rising from the dragon at the bottom and pecked on top by a bizarre bird. Sophisticated decoration, rich colors, and sinuous lines are characteristic of the so-called International Gothic style.

Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), page from an Illuminated Antiphonary

Four heavy octagonal legs with casters; legs on short sides connected by a screen of four-sided spindles; long octagonal spindles connect screens

Wright designed the George and Delta Barton house and its furnishings to complement the grander house of Delta Barton's brother, Darwin D. Martin.  Darwin and brother William E. Martin were two of Wright's most important commercial and residential clients. The Martins awarded Wright nine commissions in Chicago and Buffalo, including the Larkin Administration Building.

The dining chairs that accompany this table resemble other early Wright chairs in having tall backs decorated with narrow vertical spindles connected to a broad crest rail. Grouped around the table, the tall backs create a "room within a room." Soon after the Bartons' house was completed, Delta gave her dining set to her brother William, who commissioned Wright to design a table and chairs for the breakfast room of his Chicago house. Both suites featured the unusual octagonal chair spindles and legs.

Table, from a dining set

Nabi. Landscape in tropical and subtropical region: Tahiti

Paul Gauguin went to Tahiti in 1891 in search of new, exotic motifs, but also to escape European civilization, which he felt was artificial and spiritually bankrupt. This picture, one of the first he painted in the South Seas, exhibits the artist's characteristic post-Impressionist style. In it, Gauguin used sinuous contours and intense colors to express the joy and serenity inspired by the lush tropical site.

Tahiti would become Gauguin's home for most of the last twelve years of his life. He once said of his Tahitian paintings that he had been "eager to suggest a luxurious and untamed nature, a tropical sun that sets aglow everything around it...the equivalent of the grandeur, depth, and mystery of Tahiti when it must be expressed in one square meter of canvas."

Tahitian Landscape

In the late 1880s, Claude Monet analyzed visual perception by representing the same subject under varying conditions of light, atmosphere, and weather. In one such series, he depicted the grainstacks near his house in Giverny. These large, conical structures of wheat, 15 to 20 feet high, protected the grain from rain and rodents. Typical of farming practice in France, the stacks came to symbolize the country's rural prosperity.

Monet studied the grainstacks during different seasons as the sunlight changed in intensity. This picture shows the autumn dawn, at a moment when the sun burns off the rising mist. The grainstack is seen against the morning light, which forms a halo around it. Up close, one sees a flickering patchwork of broken brushstrokes, each one a notation of light. At a distance, these colors coalesce into a brilliant, shimmering image.

This frame is Gift of the Douglas and Mary Olson Frame Acquisition Fund.

Grainstack, Sun in the Mist

Love and Friendship (personification and symbolic representations)

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon was known for his allegorical paintings. The winged youth holding a torch is probably Love, portrayed as the Roman god Cupid, and the female figure would then represent Friendship. The theme is most likely the union of these two ideals, indicated by their embrace.
Prud'hon's inventive allegories often remain enigmatic, however, and other interpretations are possible. The rosy-skinned female figure may personify the art of painting and her pale companion the art of sculpture. Or the two may be Cupid and Psyche, whose love affair is recounted in antique Roman literature.

The Union of Love and Friendship

During the Great Depression, Walker Evans recorded the plight of the rural poor while employed by the U.S. Farm Security Administration between 1935 and 1937. He traveled from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Georgia and Mississippi, photographing people and places from coal miners and sharecroppers to dilapidated houses, churches, and storefronts. Here the photographer directs his gaze at the American vernacular tradition of signs and built environments in a deadpan and emotionally detached style.

Streetfront and Signs, Beaufort, South Carolina

We can’t see through stone, but through tricks of light and polish, Raffaelo Monti created the illusion that we can. On his Veiled Lady, the top of the head and shoulders are polished smooth, to reflect light. But where the veil falls across the face, the marble is less polished. It reflects less light, suggesting the texture of fabric. Sculptures of veiled figures peaked in popularity during the 1700s in Italy, an opportunity for sculptors to show their technical mastery over marble. About a century later, Raffaelo Monti and other artists revived this technically demanding tradition.

Veiled Lady

Sedona Red Rock

flying dragon with curving body; long, straight tail; black mount; incised scales and details

Flying Dragon, one of a pair

Flying Apsaras, right arm outstretched, left holds a plate of flowers, left leg pendant, right knee flexed.

These paintings were once part of a much larger composition—now dispersed among several collections in the United States—that originally formed the wall of a temple in north-central China, possibly Cishengsi in far northern Henan province. All together the set depicts a trio of seated bodhisattvas. Each one is flanked by standing attendant bodhisattvas and surrounded by other attendants performing rituals. They are also accompanied by flying celestials (apsara) in a paradise-like setting based on Esoteric Buddhist teachings. The seated bodhisattva here, originally the leftmost of the three primary figures, is backed by a halo and wears elaborate robes and jewelry. In his large crown is a small depiction of a buddha, the superior being from which the bodhisattva emanated.

Flying Celestial (Apsara), from a set of Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva and Flying Celestials

Set of four sliding door panels with decoration of Chinese Immortals

These sliding door panels (fusuma) show a group of Chinese Daoist immortals. The Chinese believed the immortals were historical and legendary personages who, through moral virtue, faith, and discipline, managed to transcend the bounds of the natural world and live forever. They were worshiped as saints. Old Chinese themes like this were admired in Japan by military rulers and Zen priests, who exalted Chinese culture and its heroes. 

This set of panels formed part of a much larger suite of paintings made for a temple in Kyoto. In the 1640s, Kano Sansetsu and his studio created hundreds of panel paintings for this temple. A devastating fire in the 1800s destroyed all but eight—the four panels you see here and four paintings that decorated their reverse, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Cao Guojiu (left) and Lan Caihe (right) [left of the set Daoist Immortals]

woman in red kimono seen from PR side; PL hand raised to proper left shoulder

This print was Itō Shinsui’s first collaboration with the publisher Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962). Intended for the foreign market, it originally had an English title, The Scarlet Lady, although this hardly does justice to the artist’s skillful suggestion of the woman’s introspection by focusing her gaze on a mirror outside the frame.

Many years later, Shinsui’s contemporary, the scholar Fujikake Shizuya (1881–1958), lauded this print for its “outstanding composition,” “superior color distribution,” “beauty of color tone,” “lines that convey volume,” and the artist’s “care not to bring the painting line into prints.” Notable, too, are deliberate rubbing lines in the background, executed with the corner of a rubbing pad (baren) to create textural tension against the large flat blocks of red and black.

Woman Looking at a Mirror

Blow Top Blues, The Fire Next Time

wrap-around style with two ties; blue striped waist; densely-pleated skirt with batik panel embellished with purple and yellow embroidery; black woven band below; red woven design on bottom hem

Nandan-style Skirt

flat gold bridge at left; stylized brown waves on water; two large weeping willow trees at left and right

Clouds and mist—rendered variously in gold foil, gold paint, powdered gold, and cut gold—have just parted, revealing the great span of a golden bridge but still masking its ends. At left a waterwheel turns in the river, its waves painted in silver (now tarnished to lustrous gray). Crossing this otherworldly bridge, one experiences a subtle seasonal change: the leaves of the twisting silver willows shift from the delicate leaves of mid-spring to mature leaves of late summer. The screens allude to the famous bridge over the Uji River near Kyoto, which inspired Japanese poets soon after it was built in the 600s. Paintings of the Uji Bridge decorated palaces by the 900s and remained popular for the next thousand years. With their dramatic vantage point, bold design, and shimmering metallic pigments, these luminous screens—typical of the dynamism and opulence of Momoyama-period art—represent the peak of that development.

Willow Bridge and Water Wheel (Uji Bridge) [right of a pair]

geometric architectural designs in center with staircase, building and grid; multicolored swatches of color at edges; lines and curves in black and color radiate outward from center; horizontal composition

Painter and printmaker Julie Mehretu finds inspiration for her imagery in the complex infrastructure of the constructed world. Entropia (review) typifies Mehretu's long-standing interest in using architectural language to express ideas of power, particularly how power is conveyed in public spaces. Visually complex, her print combines decontextualized elements of maps, diagrams, plans, and architectural drawings of socially-charged spaces--streets, plazas, airports, government buildings, schools, parks--with Mehretu's personal language of signs and symbols. She refers to these layered, multidimensional compositions as "psycho-geographic" abstractions, essentially hybrids of various urban structures, settings, and identities that call to mind multicultural and global concerns of contemporary society, especially the cultural and political role of power.

Entropia (review)

woman wearing a white satin gown trimmed with lace and pearls, holding a book, and seated on a yellow sofa; woman wears pearl necklaces and earrings, with her hair decorated with pearls; guitar and music next to woman on sofa; black and white lap dog in LRC

The comtesse Septimanie d’Egmont Pignatelli (1740–73), depicted here at age twenty-three, was the Jackie Kennedy of Parisian high society in the 1760s. Her father was a trusted adviser to King Louis XV. At fifteen, she married Casimir Pignatelli, comte d’Egmont, descended from ancient nobility of the Netherlands and of Naples and Aragon. The comtesse sponsored many leading figures of the Enlightenment, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Swedish-born Alexander Roslin was famous for his portraits of French aristocrats. He painted the comtesse in a fashionable Spanish-style gown, a reference to her husband’s ancestry. The guitar at her side (she was a gifted player) continues the Spanish theme. The hand-carved, original frame is crowned with the torch of Hymen and the bow and quiver of Cupid, emblems of wedded bliss confirming that the comtesse’s husband commissioned the picture as a gift.

The Comtesse d'Egmont Pignatelli in Spanish Costume

two figures in pavillion on stilts in water; dark rock coveriing much of pavillon; pine trees and larger rock formations in background; bridge through haze at center; boat at L; inscription

Beneath impossibly tall pine trees and distant, misty peaks, two men round the bend of a path at lower right. They make their way toward a thatched pavilion nearby, where two more men sit and gaze at fishermen rowing a boat on the river. Above, a poetic inscription reinforces the theme: early spring in an idyllic mountain retreat.  

South of the river and north of the river, the snow is clearing.
Mountains spew forth rosy clouds, springtime colors are fresh.
Travelers remove their shoes, though the going is still rough.
Opening the window, seated guests enjoy the splendid view.
Water flowing beneath the bridge rings like chimes of jade.
At the eaves, the wind in the pines tunes its stringless lute.
But why is that leaf of a boat moored beside the cliff'
It must be a craft for roving ten thousand miles away.

Such combinations of a painting with one or more poetic inscriptions are called shigajiku (literally “poem-painting scroll”). They are collaborative works created by groups of Zen monks and lay practitioners, talented poets, calligraphers, and painters who lived not in some serene countryside but in the noisy, crowded spaces of urban monasteries.

Early Spring Landscape

forest scene with tall, straight tree trunks; dense foliage of wild strawberries with white flowers and some berries; weasel in foliage at R; short pine tree in LLC

At the young age of twenty-seven, Katayama Bokuyō was awarded the grand prize at Japan's annual Imperial Juried Exhibition in 1927. The following year, he submitted this painting showing a weasel nearly hidden in a tangled bed of flowering fishmint (dokudani) deep in the forest. The judges were so impressed that he was given the status of mukansa, literally "non-vetted," meaning that henceforth any painting he submitted to the annual exhibition would be automatically included.    

Bokuyō championed a style of painting collectively known as nihon-ga (literally, Japanese style painting) to distinguish it from Western-style oil painting, which was gaining popularity in Japan. Nihon-ga artists used traditional subjects, formats and materials, but their approach often reveals some influence from the West. Here the logical recession into deep space and subtle color variations to suggest atmospheric depth are the result of Bokuyō's exposure to Western art. Nevertheless, the dramatically tipped ground-plain, reduction of motifs, and precisely applied mineral pigments are elements of traditional painting.

Forest

three vertical white panels, each broken up into six horizontal sections; panels have protruding arcs, circles and half-circles; left panel has wedge at top; center panel has protruding globe at top; right panel has globe with slit at top

Ruth Duckworth continued making ceramic murals in the 1960s after moving to Chicago from England (where she went after fleeing Nazi persecution at the outset of World War II). Until her death in 2009, she worked in porcelain, stoneware, and bronze. 

This untitled piece continues Ruth Duckworth's pioneering work with large-scale ceramic wall murals, exploring abstractions of geography and space. It is one of her largest porcelain wall murals, as well as the largest movable wall mural she has executed.  As such, it is a tour de force, as this delicate ceramic material is notoriously difficult to control. She characterized it as "a very temperamental material. I'm constantly fighting it. It wants to lie down, you want it to stand up. I have to make it do what it doesn't want to do. But there's no other material that so effectively communicates both fragility and strength." This mural displays her ability to manipulate light and shadow through refined shapes and multiple layers with a minimal color palette.

Untitled

stone figure with red pigment stands on black wood base with hands touching index figure to thumb; face incised on either side with rectangular markings; headdress crowns figure with large ear ornaments; small drill hole in center of chest

Chalchiuhtlicue (Chal-chee-oot-LEE-kway), literally "She of the Jade Skirt," is the Mexica (meh-SHEE-kah) goddess of water and the wife of rain god Tlaloc (TLAH-loak). She is identifiable by her distinctive wide headband with large tassels. Precious stone or shell was once inlaid into her eyes, the incisions in her cheeks, and the cavity in her chest. However, this sculpture assumes the pose characteristic of another important Mexica goddess. Her pose, standing with her hands extending outward as if she were holding something, is typical of the corn goddess Chicomecoatl (Chee-koh-may-KOH-atl). As Chicomecoatl, she would have likely held small ears of an ancient variety of corn, which are now lost. Both goddesses are associated with fertility. A sculpture like this one would have been the focal point of a shrine.

Chalchiuhtlicue

S-shaped path in an abstracted landscape; greens; pinks in foreground, LLQ; rust-oranges in spots scattered throughout; pinkish-orange sky

Winding River is simultaneously a landscape and an abstraction. Colorful and poetic, it recalls Impressionism but was certainly not painted directly from nature. Rather, Edgar Degas relied on imagination and perhaps also memory, loosely basing this monotype on a Japanese color print made in 1856 by Utagawa Hiroshige, whose work Degas collected. As with many of the nearly fifty landscape monotypes he produced from 1890 onward, Degas began this work by painting in dilute oils on a smooth copper plate, then used a printing press to transfer the image to paper. Continuing to experiment, he turned to drawing and augmented the picture with pastel crayon.

Winding River

sound film installation without dialogue; instrumental music with some vocals; views of landscapes and the exteriors of motels; scenes of various animals inside motel rooms--horse, birds, raccoon, deer, bison, fox, rabbits, beaver, mountain lion; total running time: 24 minutes, 28 seconds Certificate of Authenticity in presentation box (copy in object file) Installation and technical requirements: see Notes

Doug Aitken is considered among the leading video artists of his generation. He is known for creating exquisitely produced and engaging videos that utilize the visual richness of the medium to capture the complexity of society and culture today.

In migration (empire) - linear version, the movements of wild North American migratory animals are transposed onto the ubiquitous space of the modern roadside motel. As the indigenous animals inhabit these vacant and sterile interiors, the video explores the complex relationship between America's wilderness and its sprawling built environment. Images of vast landscapes, roadside businesses, and industrial cityscapes call to mind the migration of settlers across the great expanse of land -- settlers who met the untamed wilderness to forge new ways of life defined westward expansion. But what was lost in the ambition to expand'

Aitken's close studies of wild, North American animals released within the artificial habitat of the motel are spellbinding. A horse occupies a room, watching wild horses run free on television; a buffalo, the tragic American symbol of the wild West, trashes the space. The animals' displacement from their native environment seems at once humorous and horrific, strangely familiar and prophetic.

In migration, Doug Aitken explores the complex relationship between America's wilderness and its sprawling built environment. Images of vast landscapes, roadside motels, and industrial cityscapes from every region of the country move across the screen, calling to mind the migration of settlers across the great expanse of land. Unexpectedly, the protagonists of Aitken's meditative exploration are neither frontiersmen nor actors, but native North American animals. Confined in the sterile environment of motel rooms, the animals cautiously explore the unfamiliar habitat; their investigations yield scenes that are both humorous and heart-rending. The work captures the country's strengths and contradictions - the sublime beauty of a landscape t

migration (empire) - linear version

abstract image in red-orange, blues, yellow, dark red, green; dots of various sizes overall with looped openwork designs with other colors showing through

Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama's work is widely diverse in theory and practice, including painting, drawing, sculpture, assemblage, performance, video, and installation. At one point, she ventured into the fashion world with her own clothing line. During the decade she lived in New York-1958 to 1968-she was especially known for her exuberant abstract paintings, which used a signature motif known as an "infinity net"-interlocking shapes painted with netlike patterns.

In Untitled, Kusama added her characteristic polka dots over the infinity nets, creating yet another dimension. This work was made shortly before she returned to Japan to seek treatment for the hallucinations and obsessive thoughts that had troubled her since childhood. Kusama has often said making art is the way she manages her obsessions.

mostly abstract in bright colors with several fish-like elements against pink in URQ

The New York Times describes Peter Saul as "an artist's artist" and "a serial offender in violations of good taste." He was inspired by 1940’s comic strip drawings and the painterly style of Expressionist artists such as William de Kooning and Max Beckmann. Saul's use of cartoons and pop-culture imagery situates him among the forefathers of Pop Art, but his pessimistic political satire sets him apart from mainstream Pop styles.

Policeman on W.C.

white and grey veined marble; carved sculpture in the form of a Chinese side chair with curved back

The art of Ai Weiwei falls into several categories - photography, sculpture, conceptual art, design, and architecture - all of which are connected by a persistent questioning of Chinese conventions and traditions. Marble Chair is part of Ai's practice that is inspired by antique Chinese furniture, the systematic destruction of Chinese culture and its legacy that began during the Cultural Revolution, reinforced by Chairman Mao's famous directive "without destruction there is not construction."  

Ai's work is often packed with personal, political, and culturally significant reference points. Carved from of a single block of marble to resemble a traditional yokeback chair it was one of the few objects his family was allowed to keep when they were sent into exile. He has collaborated with and outsourced his work to highly skilled artisans who are trained in classical pottery and design. Their knowledge, in this case, of marble carving is employed as a means of conserving traditional skills. As a superb piece of craftsmanship, Marble Chair has become a poignant symbol for China's position as the world's largest manufacturing center and labor force, which includes the continuities and disruptions of cultural tradition and memory in the country today.

Marble Chair

back panel carved in low relief and decorated with four blue birds, four small birds in a nest, tall twining flowering vine; small bear in LRC; brightly-colored pigments; top "handle" carved with twisted design and painted in yellow and red; footboard painted with radiating U shapes

The Kahnawake (Mohawk) of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois Confederacy) create cradleboards from large planks of wood to which they attach protective bows that go over the child's head. Some examples have footrests to provide additional support. The backs are decorated with elaborate painted carvings. In the 17th century, the Kahnawake lived in an area surrounded by French-Canadian settlers, whose folk art influenced traditional Kahnawake art. Some scholars believe that the carving of some cradleboards was created by French-Canadian folk artists, but the iconography has a consistent theme related to the Kanien'gehaga traditional worldview. There is usually a carved flowering tree that may reference the Sky World; the tree often has a mother bird feeding her young and represents the relationship between the cosmos and the Kahnawake people.

Cradleboard

figure with six heads, arms, and legs astride crouched bull on wood base; metal bands around wrists, some biceps, and most ankles; halo with flames attached at back; two hands of two arms together in praying position, other arms bent and flare outwards. Upper left arm holds long staff, lower one holds implement with "curly q"-shaped end. Upper right arm holds a trident. Lower right arm fingersshaped like it was holding something in hand. Three bottom heads have crystal inlay eyes. Three smaller heads on top considerably smaller.

Daiitoku Myōō is meant to be intimidating. He is also known as the Wisdom King of Awe-Inspiring Power, and it is his job to defeat evil. This Buddhist guardian deity’s intense rage is manifested by his wild appearance: six legs, six arms carrying an assortment of weapons, and six glaring faces backed by a halo of flames. Daiitoku Myōō does not act alone but is one of the Five Great Wisdom Kings (Godai Myōō). Four of the Wisdom Kings guard the cardinal directions surrounding the central fifth king. Each of them also guards its own buddha. Since Daiitoku occupies the west, he is associated with the wrath of Amida Buddha, whose abode is a paradise known as the Western Pure Land.

Daiitoku Myōō, the Wisdom King of Awe-Inspiring Power

two figures against silver leaf background; both figures demon-like with teeth; figure on left holds two fans; figure on right has red skin and is pouring water from two jars

The gods of wind and thunder stem from Hindu deities that were assimilated into the Buddhist pantheon and later merged with indigenous Shintō personifications of natural elements. In this pair of folding screens, the Thunder God, at right, is identified by his red skin and drums, which he beats to create thunderclaps. In the left screen, the Wind God appears as he typically does, as a horned, gargoyle-like creature with green skin and a cloth sack from which he unleashes blasts of wind. Here, however, Mano Kyōtei also equipped him with a pair of fans. Another departure from established iconography is the addition of the Rain God, who carries flasks of water and is crowned with a dragon, a mythical beast traditionally associated with rain in East Asia. This innovative interpretation established these screens as Kyōtei’s masterpiece.
(2013.29.7.1-.2)

Gods of Wind and Rain [left of the pair Gods of Thunder, Wind, and Rain]

gnarled pine tree with a small waterfall at right; black ink and wash with "clouds" of gold spots

In East Asia, pine, bamboo, and plum are known as the “three friends of winter.” In addition to their individual auspicious connotations—chaste pine, upright bamboo, and pure plum—each of these three plants is also celebrated for remaining vigorous even during winter and adding color to an otherwise lifeless landscape. They thus represent the Confucian ideal of tenacity in spite of adversity.           

Yamamoto Baiitsu’s paintings show his familiarity with the colorful, detailed mode of bird-and-flower painting popularized by Shen Nanpin (1682–1758), an influential Chinese painter briefly active in Japan. In this pair of screens, decorative qualities are balanced with a sense of order and clarity: the rough bark of the plum provides a textural foil to the blossoms, while the arching form of the pine is mirrored in the flow of the stream.

Three Friends of Winter [right of a pair]

very tall, graceful form; five edges rising from a narrow bottom into a single, beveled point at top; mounts by a metal post to a marble slab; light blue/green color (seihakuji); marble has a polished top with rugged edges

This is the tallest single object that Fukami has created. Through this large, abstract, ceramic sculpture, Fukami intended to overturn the traditional perception of ceramics as relatively small and merely utilitarian or decorative. It took him two years to make this piece, an ordeal that culminated in a heart attack. Using a mould, he made two other Rise sculptures; one is in a private collection in Japan, the other is at the Museum of Ceramic Art in Hyōgo.

Rise

image of a green, blue and brown bird on a branch preening its wing; gold frame with glass

The famed ‘Impey Album,’ to which these 11 natural history studies originally belonged, marks the beginning of a new school in the canon of Indian Painting: that is “Company Painting’’—so called after the British East India Company, which by 1757 had taken effective rule over the sub-continent—spanning from c. 1760-1880 and distinguished by native painters adapting to the needs of Colonial tastes. The result was an emergence of a distinctive Anglo-Indian aesthetic, which we see in the remarkable paintings here. 

Between 1777-1783, Lady Mary Impey, wife of the recently appointed Chief Justice of Bengal, Sir Elijah Impey, commissioned three artists: a Muslim, Shaik Zain ud-Din, and two Hindus, Bhawani Das and Ram Das (all of whom trained in a Provincial Mughal atelier in the neighboring city of Patna) to record the newfound wonders of her Calcutta aviary and menagerie.

Indian Roller on Sandalwood Branch

video with animated black and white images on the turning pages of a book; imagery includes man walking and birds; music with vocals; blue presentation box in the form of a book with text from a dictionary at interior; removable cardboard tray with Blu ray DVD and USB flash drive; gold USB drive tied to tan ribbon attached to left side of cardboard tray; WD TVLive streaming media player, power cord, remote and three brochures (technical and warranty guide, connection instructions and promotional brochure)

William Kentridge is an internationally renowned artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. Second-hand Reading is an excellent example of Kentridge’s animation style, and his ongoing personal investigation of South Africa and its history of apartheid. It is a powerful artwork that explores race relations in South Africa through drawings, text, and music.

Second-hand Reading

portrait of Diana with light brown curly hair in an updo with some loose curls in front, wearing a gold and silver headdress, earrings with clear drops and an armlet with a large green gem and pearls; figure is bare-breasted and wears a pinkish-red garment and holds a spear on a staff with a pinkish-red tassel

Diana as Goddess of the Hunt

bust portrait of Christ as a child with light wavy hair, with a high hairline, with head turned slightly toward PR; Christ squeezes a bunch of grapes in his PR hand, with the juice running into a white footed bowl; Christ holds a small bunch of grapes in his PL hand, which are reflected in the silver cross-topped domed cover in foreground; small portions of view of a landscapes in top corners; portrait in a tondo, with flowers in each corner

This small tapestry depicts the infant Jesus pressing grapes into a chalice. The imagery was widely understood at the time of its creation to reference the physical sacrifice Jesus would later make in his crucifixion. In the Christian ritual of the Eucharist, followers drink holy wine to remember Jesus’s suffering. The remarkably fine quality of the weaving suggests the tapestry was made in a preeminent Brussels workshop. The presence of gold and silk yarns proclaim the tapestry’s value as a high status object, but the intimate scale and subject matter suggest it was used by an elite individual within a devotional practice, most likely within the home.

The Infant Christ Pressing the Wine of the Eucharist

abstract image; blue/black ground with white and blue flower petal outlines; clusters of white and blue circles (like hydrangea blossoms); blue leaves; other circular shapes in blues, purple, red and greens

Emmi Whitehorse blends the physical with the metaphysical, the real with the imagined in this mixed-media work on paper. Informed by nature’s beauty and Navajo culture, the work takes the form of an ethereal landscape. Its ambiguous, atmospheric space is populated by an assortment of abstract, symbolic, and biomorphic forms that seem to float across a ground of deep, luxuriant color. Seeds, leaves, plants, and dried flowers intermingle with numbers, Navajo signs, and fragments of curved lines. Though neither descriptive nor narrative, the work demonstrates Whitehorse’s fine-tuned ability to fuse disparate elements within a lyrical realm of experience, memory, and contemplation.

Pollination

headdress with leather cap/headpiece with beaded band around front top with white beads with two lines of blue triangles, two red bars and two lines of red and orange triangles at either end; long red wool strips at each side of headdress, backed with buffalo hide; brown and cream eagle feathers overall; some feathers at top have light brown horsehair strands attached to ends; eagle feather at center back accented with bright red and bright purple feathers; images of cows' heads drawn on leather beneath feathers on crown of head

This headdress is the gift of Jack Garcia, a Lakota descendant of Long Wolf, who led Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors in the victory against General George Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn, in 1876. Created by a Tsistsistas or Lakota artist, it is a symbol of power, leadership, and generosity. In this same spirit of Lakota generosity, the Garcia family gave the headdress to Mia for visitors to admire and appreciate. At its installation, a Lakota medicine man blessed the object with the family.

Becky Haaf, 2021

Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the Dance)

Shiva Nataraja (Lord of the Dance), c. 1100

India