Saucy Satire From the Past and Present at Block

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Have a laugh at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art this winter. The museum is presenting witty, outrageous and, at times,

“black” and “blue” humor by one of England’s greatest satirical artists and by some of the funniest printmakers working in America today. 

Free and open to the public, the exhibitions “Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England” and “The Satirical Edge in Contemporary Prints and Graphics” are on view from Jan. 14 to March 13, 2011, in the Block Museum’s Main and Alsdorf galleries, respectively, at 40 Arts Circle Drive, on the University’s Evanston campus.

On Jan. 29 the museum will hold “Printpalooza,” a print fair featuring live demonstrations of printmaking techniques, an affordable print market and more.

THOMAS ROWLANDSON

One of the most popular satirists of his time, Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827) applied his masterful drawing skills and keen sense of humor to colorful, detailed, and sometimes bawdy depictions of everyday life in London and its environs, capturing the mixing of classes in the gathering places and leisure activities of his native city, at a time of remarkable population growth and social change.

The 71 drawings, watercolors, prints and books in “Pleasures and Pursuits” at the Block offer an entryway into the social and political life of Georgian England. The watercolor “Vauxhall Gardens,” seen by many as Rowlandson’s greatest work, celebrates a leading entertainment site attended by royalty and London’s fashionable elite as well as its lower ranks. In “A Cake in Danger,” a night watchman sleeps on the job as a prostitute surreptitiously reaches for a victim’s pocket. “Miseries of London” presents a comical traffic jam of crashing coaches and carriages disrupting laborers, vendors and passers-by on a busy London corner. “Miseries of the Country” portrays alcohol-fueled reverie in a tavern in suburban Essex, where Rowlandson laments “the necessity of getting dead drunk every day to save your life.

“Thomas Rowlandson: Pleasures and Pursuits in Georgian England” was organized by the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y., with support from the Evelyn Metzger Exhibition Fund, and Furthermore, a program of the J. M. Kaplan Fund. Curated by Patricia Phagan, the Philip and Lynn Straus Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Loeb Art Center, it is the first American exhibition on Rowlandson in 20 years. A catalogue with contributions by Phagan, Vic Gatrell of the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Amelia Rauser, of Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa., accompanies the exhibition.

SATIRE IN CONTEMPORARY GRAPHIC ARTS

Accompanying the Rowlandson exhibition is “The Satirical Edge,” an exhibition drawn primarily from the museum’s permanent collection. It features works from the 1950s to the present by artists active in the United States who use the power of printmaking to create outrageous scenes and narratives of warfare, greed and injustice.

The show begins with printmakers from the mid-20th century, including William Gropper (1897–1977). Gropper created dark lithographs, such as “Ladder of Success” and “Lust,” with characters driven and tormented by their base desires. Works by Warrington Colescott (b. 1921) and Sidney Chafetz (b. 1922) -- famous for their pointed jabs at the worlds of high art and academia -- also are featured. A newer generation is represented by artists Tom Huck (b. 1971), whose burlesque art, such as the 1998 woodcut “Chili Dogs, Chicks, and Monster Trucks,” explores American folklore and subcultures, and the Mexican-born, American-based

Enrique Chagoya (b. 1953), whose 2010 print “Return to Goya No. 9,” portrays President Barack Obama in a Goya-inspired setting. Other contemporary artists in the exhibition include R. Crumb, Sue Coe and the Guerrilla Girls, a feminist art collective.

WINTER 2011 EXHIBITION TOURS

Block Museum docents lead free tours of the winter exhibitions at 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays from Jan. 15 to March 13.

PRINTAPALOOZA AND OTHER PROGRAMS

Unless noted, the following events are open to the public and free of charge.

• Noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, Block Museum “Printpalooza” print fair. Drive By Press, a design duo known for “guerrilla-style” print and apparel creation at concerts and festivals, will demonstrate the printmaking process and offer attendees the opportunity to select designs, purchase and watch the inking and pressing of T-shirts. Artist Eric Fuertes will create prints with a custom-made “Dumbo Press” while Brooklyn’s Cannonball Press, organizers of the Prints Gone Wild! events in New York, will display large-scale print canvases. Chicago’s Spudnik Press and the other participating artists will have original prints for sale, with some priced at $20 or less.

• 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 9, “The Language of Visual Humor before Rowlandson and How He Developed His Own Dialect” lecture. Constance McPhee, associate curator of drawings and prints at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, will examine European caricature and satire prior to Thomas Rowlandson’s time and discuss how Rowlandson and his contemporaries reshaped their predecessors’ art into a dynamic, visual form.

• 2 p.m. Feb. 12 and 26, Block Cinema free screenings. Block Cinema will present two free matinee screenings to complement the Rowlandson exhibition: “Kitty,” shown at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb, 12, is a 1945 Oscar-nominated film starring Paulette Goddard as a young woman from the streets of 18th-century London who is whirled into high society when artist Thomas Gainsborough paints her portrait; and “Becky Sharp,” 2 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 26, based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel “Vanity Fair,” an early Technicolor film from 1935 that stars Miriam Hopkins as a socially ambitious woman in early 19th-century Britain.

• 1 to 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 20, “Games and Pastimes in Georgian England” family program. This family event combines an interactive tour of the Block Museum’s Thomas Rowlandson exhibition with a hand-coloring print activity and card games from the artist’s period. Recommended for children aged 6 to 12, the event is free for Block Museum members; $5 per family for nonmembers. Preregistration is required by e-mailing blockeducation@northwestern.edu.

• 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 24, Block Museum book club discussion. The Block Museum will host a book club discussion of “Wilson,” the latest work by cartoonist Daniel Clowes. Clowes is author and illustrator of “Ghost World,” one of the instant classics of the graphic novel genre. Led by Cary Elza, a Ph.D. candidate in the department of radio, television and film at Northwestern and a instructor at DePaul University, the program is free but pre-registration is required. E-mail blockeducation@northwestern.edu to pre-register. Attendees are encouraged to bring a copy of the book.

• 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 2, talk by Amelia Rauser. Amelia Rauser, a Northwestern doctorate recipient, who is associate professor of art history at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa., and a contributor to the Thomas Rowlandson exhibition catalogue, will speak on “Ribald Antiquity: Bodies, Statues and the Lust for Classicism in Rowlandson’s Art.” Rauser will explore the eroticism of antique art that repeatedly surfaces in Thomas Rowlandson’s work.

MUSEUM HOURS

The Block Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday; and from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The museum is closed on Monday.

For more information, visit www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu or call (847) 491-4000.

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