December 9, 2003
Block Focuses on American Art
EVANSTON, Ill.
--- Works by some of the nation’s most “passionate
and provocative” artists will be explored when Northwestern
University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, 40 Arts
Circle Drive, Evanston campus, dedicates its winter and spring
2004 programming to American art.
These artists tackled social problems such as poverty, the working
poor, the Great Depression, racism, anti-Semitism, the onset of
Fascism, World War II and nuclear threat during the Cold War.
“Our exhibitions, ‘American Expressionism: Art and
Social Change, 1920s-1950s’; ‘Working Conditions: Depression-Era
American Prints’ and ‘Lorna Simpson: 31’ include,
or are themselves, important works of American art that are individual
and unique, but also share a common interest in looking upon, or
creating art from this nation’s historical margins,” said
David Robertson, director of the Block Museum. A fourth exhibition, “American
Diorama: A Video Installation by Charles Woodman,” is a comprehensive
representation of 19th and 20th century American landscape.
One exhibition will be open from Jan. 17 to March 28. Three others
will be open from Jan. 30 to May 9. Admission to all four is free.
Detailed information follows:
• “American
Expressionism: Art and Social Change, 1920s-1950s,” Jan.
30 to May 9, Main Gallery,
organized by the Columbus Museum of Art and
curated by Bram Dijkstra from his book "American Expressionism: Art and
Social
Change, 1920-1950" (Harry N. Abrams 2003), critically re-examines
artists of early 20th century America and represents the blending
of European and American sensibilities in an art that used the
innovations of modernism to support those whose fortunes were
crushed by circumstance, backbreaking labor or brutality of war.
Ivan Albright, Elaine de Kooning, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley,
Franz Klein, Jacob Lawrence, Archibald Motley Jr., Georgia O’Keeffe
and other artists called attention to the dignity of the marginalized
and the maltreated in society. More than 80 works will be featured.
• “Working Conditions: Depression-Era American
Prints,” Jan. 30 to May 9, Print, Drawing and Photography
Study Center, explores the conditions of urban industrial
labor during the Great Depression. Drawn from the Block Museum’s
collection of American prints from the 1930s, it will address
some of the critical issues facing the working classes, ranging
from work hazards to the devastating impact of unemployment.
Curated by Northwestern art history graduate student Meredith
TeGrotenhuis, this exhibition examines “…. how artists
used stylistic and compositional devices in order to heighten
the emotive effect of their subject matter, to elicit viewers’ empathy,
and to raise awareness of the relentless struggles of the working
classes.”
• For
more than 20 years, Lorna Simpson has been challenging gender
and racial stereotypes in her provocative photographs, installations
and films. The exhibition “Lorna Simpson: 31,” Jan.
17 to March 28, Alsdorf Gallery, originally commissioned
for “Documenta XI” (the celebrated exhibition of contemporary
art featuring the work of 116 artists, that ran from June to September
2002 in Kasssel, Germany), tracks a month in the life of an unknown
woman in a grid of 31 small video screens. She is observed in her
apartment, the street, the office, and various recreational spaces
during the 31-day period. Despite appearing to be circumscribed
by her daily routine, Simpson’s unknown woman is not always
where we expect her to be. In undermining the viewer’s received
expectations, Simpson exposes the regulated structures and controlled
parameters of social space by which all our lives are governed.
The detailed study of a woman’s daily life evokes both Jean-Luc
Godard’s diaristic film “Two or Three Things I Know
About Her” and Chantal Akerman’s ”Jeanne Dielman,
23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.”
• To
provide a more poetic backdrop to these socially charged looks
at American culture, the video installation “American
Diorama: A Video Installation by Charles Woodman,” Jan. 30
through May 9, Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery/Classroom,
follows a long tradition of representations of the American landscape.
From Albert Bierstadt’s 19th century majestic paintings of
western mountain scenery to 20th century panoramic photographs,
artists have created landscapes powerful in their symbolism – nationalistic
and spiritual. Shot on location across the United States, Charles
Woodman’s five-channel video installation is both a document
of and a poetic response to the natural landscape and exploits
the medium’s ability to portray time, movement and space.
Woodman has been working in the field of video art for more than
20 years.
“To complement these interrelated exhibitions, the Block
Museum and Block Cinema, working with Northwestern’s Center
for Art and Technology and American Studies, Gender Studies and
African Studies programs as well as the University’s departments
of history; radio, television and film; art history, and art theory
and practice, have organized a series of artist talks, lectures,
symposia and films to deepen our understanding of the complex and
often unsettling nature of American culture,” said Robertson. “At
this time of heightened national awareness, and social, political
and economic uncertainties, these exhibitions remind us of how
far we have come and how far we have to go as a nation.”
Detailed information regarding related programs scheduled in
conjunction with the winter and spring 2004 exhibitions will be
announced at a later date. For more information call the Block
Museum at (847) 491-4000. |