Exhibition Status: Past

Loïs Mailou Jones

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Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color

“Mailou Jones’s great gift was transporting the viewer into the daily lives of her subjects… When she did a mask, the eyes moved with you. When she showed an African American girl cleaning fish, the strokes were rhythmic.”

– Jacqueline Trescott, The Washington Post

“There are seventy paintings in this show. It’s a tour de force—as was she.”

– Kent Boyer, Dallas Art News

Born in Boston in 1905 and trained at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Loïs Mailou Jones began her career at a time when racial prejudices and gender discrimination were strong in American culture. She achieved early success as a designer of drapery fabric, but when a decorator told her that a “colored girl” could not possibly have produced her sophisticated designs, her response was to quit fabric design and focus instead on the fine arts, so she could sign her name to her work. In 1937 she studied for a year at the Academie Julian in Paris, a city whose cosmopolitan laissez-faire toward race and gender was a revelation for her: she made many friends in the Parisian art world, produced dozens of paintings (many bearing the influence of Cezanne and Cassatt), and was able at last to exhibit under her own name and “purely on merit.” After her return to the United States, and throughout her prolonged travels to Haiti and Africa, she never ceased to innovate, infusing her mastery of American and European painting styles with the exuberance and color of African and Caribbean imagery and motifs—particularly African masks, which were a lifelong muse for her.

This exhibition surveyed the vast sweep of Jones’s seventy-five years as a painter, stretching from late Post-Impressionism to a contemporary mixture of African, Caribbean, American, and African-American iconography, design, and thematic elements. Developed by the Mint Museum of Art and the Loïs Mailou Jones Pierre-Noël Trust, this exhibition featured 62 works from both public and private collections, as well as from the artist’s estate.

Edward Koren

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Edward Koren: The Capricious Line

“Mr. Koren can be funny, psychologically acute and philosophically provocative. He has a pitch-perfect feel for gag lines, and with his scribbly draftsmanship has forged one of the most distinctive styles in cartooning.”

– Ken Johnson, New York Times

“The New Yorker‘s finest social critic of his generation and milieu.”

– Richard Gehr, The Comics Journal

This exhibition celebrates the career of Edward Koren, renowned cartoonist, graphic satirist, and long-standing contributor to The New Yorker. Through approximately 50 original pen and ink as well as watercolor cartoons, Koren’s “capricious line” deftly articulates the neurosis of contemporary society with a distinctive drawing style, relatable characters, and wry criticism.

Edward Koren presents works spanning five decades drawn from his more than 1,000 published cartoons and covers in The New Yorker. Also featuring many never-before-seen independent drawings that highlight his savvy intellect and innovative technique, Koren delights in portraying man’s relationship to society and nature through imaginary beasts, comedic societal interactions, and humorous commentaries on art. This exhibition not only honors the accomplishments of Koren as a beloved cartoonist but also demonstrates his skill as an artist. The full-scale, heavyweight ink drawings—which until now have only been experienced as postcard-sized images in the pages of The New Yorker—showcase his mastery of illustration and his command of comedic understatement.

Koren’s satiric art addresses diverse social, cultural, and environmental issues. Straddling a world of imaginative beasts and the brutal, but often hilarious, banality of everyday life allows Koren to flourish in his role as society’s keen observer and sharp critic. Through this impressive collection of works, Koren shares the sheer fun and joy of drawing with his audiences. These innovative illustrations demonstrate the psychological, philosophical, and comical talents of Koren’s pen.

Artist’s Bio

Edward Koren has long been associated with the The New Yorker magazine, where he has published over 1000 cartoons, as well as numerous covers and illustrations. He has also contributed to many other publications, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, G.Q., Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Vogue, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The Nation and The Boston Globe.

Born in New York City, Koren attended the Horace Mann School and Columbia University. He did graduate work in etching and engraving with S. W. Hayter at Atelier 17 in Paris, and received an MFA degree from Pratt Institute. He was on the faculty of Brown University for many years. He lives in Vermont with his family.

The Art of John Dos Passos

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The Art of John Dos Passos

“John Dos Passos not only was one of the most important writers of the post-World War I ‘lost generation,’ but a talented painter whose work was hung alongside paintings by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.”

– Newsday

“His visual art shows us another aspect of his open and inquiring mind.”

– Jay Williams, curator of the Morris Museum of Art

Noted author of such prized works of American fiction as Manhattan Transfer (1925) and The USA Trilogy (1930-1936), John Dos Passos also enthusiastically pursued a career as a visual artist for over 50 years. Dos Passos began sketching in earnest while still in his teens, and in 1913 attended the fabled Armory Show in New York City, which introduced Americans to the groundbreaking work of Van Gogh, Picasso, Duchamp, Munch, and other artists of the European avant-garde. Dos Passos soon developed a unique and wide-ranging style of his own, incorporating ideas from Matisse and Picasso as well as traits of Impressionism and Expressionism. In 1923—years before he wrote the novels that would make him famous—Dos Passos had his first public exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, mainly watercolors of his travels in Spain and Western Europe, where he had served as an ambulance driver in the First World War.  Over the next five decades, as his political views moved to the right and his literary career waned, his vivid paintings, sketches, book illustrations, and set designs won him a highly respected parallel career as a visual chronicler of 20th century daily life.

This exhibition of 66 watercolor paintings and six illustrated dust jackets vividly chronicled his travels as a social revolutionary, with colorful landscapes and portraits that provide a rare commentary on an exciting era.

Inner Light

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Inner Light: Photographs by Flor Garduño

“The visions in ‘Inner Light’ have always been with [Garduño] in embryonic form—the project is a self-portrait, a fairytale told through bodies and objects.”

— Phyllis Thompson Reid, Aperture

“Garduño evokes ancient myths and indigenous rituals with a surrealist touch. She celebrates all her subjects….with the sensuous play of light and shadow, but it is the female body, its planes and curves, that Garduño consecrates with sumptuous luminosity.”

— Publishers Weekly, September 1, 2002

Enigmatic black-and-white photography characterizes the work of Flor Garduño, a veteran woman photographer who trained under the Mexican master photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo. In her surreal juxtapositions of body and object, human and animal—the supernatural and the tangible—Garduño’s deeply personal work evokes myths, fables, and the dream logic of magic realism, in which the fanciful and inexplicable illuminate the everyday.

Inner Light showcased 62 photographs representing still-life objects, nudes, and elements of the natural world. Garduño’s visionary work—emotional, psychological explorations of femininity—achieve a dreamlike communion of subject and lens. Inner Light is the apotheosis of her ten-year quest to blend the genres of the nude and the still life (“nature morte”) to create hybrids that she refers to as “natures silencieuses.”

Garduño’s work is in the collections of prominent public institutions, such as New York City’s Museum of Modern Art and the Art Institute of Chicago, and her numerous photographic books include Testigos del tiempo (Witnesses of Time), 1992; Bestiarium, 1987; and Magia del juego eterno (Magic of the Eternal Game), 1985.

Andrew Wyeth

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Andrew Wyeth: The Helga Pictures

“Working primarily in watercolor and egg tempera, Wyeth specializes in transforming simple rural settings into dramatic evocations of isolation and longing… The Helga Series may be his finest achievement."

– Dorothy Shinn, Beacon Journal

“This is Wyeth at his best.”

– Bob Keefer, The Register-Guard

From 1971 to 1985, Andrew Wyeth undertook a long, intensive study of one model, Helga Testorf. Testorf was one of the artist’s neighbors in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and for some 14 years she served as Wyeth’s private project. The approximately 240 works that resulted from their friendship were investigatory, diverse, and extraordinarily intimate. Wyeth conducted his series of drawings and paintings in almost total secrecy, revealing to no one the existence of the series, the identity of the model, or the extent of the project. Testorf provided a means for Wyeth to explore the complexity of the human figure. She was presented in almost every human aspect: clothed, nude, indoors, outdoors, in recognizable settings and against neutral backgrounds. With the Helga series, Wyeth tested the limits of his imagination using a single model.

When The Helga Pictures premiered at Washington’s National Gallery of Art in May of 1987, it was viewed by well over a half-million people. On its initial 1987 to 1989 tour, the exhibition traveled under the National Gallery’s auspices to a selection of notable American museums. Since then, portions of the Helga suite have been shown throughout the United States and abroad on special occasions—never more than twice a year, and not every year.

International Arts & Artists was honored to organize a limited tour of more than 70 works from the Helga series, which included finished paintings in tempera and dry brush as well as drawings and works in watercolor.

From the Fire

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From The Fire: Contemporary Korean Ceramics

“These pieces represent the finest and most honored work in modern Korean ceramics… [T]he first show of its kind in the West.”

— Diane Weddington, Oakland Tribune

“Visitors will find themselves surrounded by stunning examples of exquisite craftsmanship, varied techniques and artistic visions. With such an abundance of riches, it’s difficult to know where to stand.”

— Christopher A. Yates, The Columbus Dispatch

In celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of Korean immigration to the United States, From the Fire: Contemporary Korean Ceramics showcased new works by artists from Korea. A majority of the pieces were created in 2003 exclusively for the exhibition, presenting a diverse array of over 90 ceramic pieces by 54 artists. The artists in the exhibition range in age from 30 to 80 years old and come from many regions and schools, effectively highlighting the distinct trends in the development of contemporary Korean ceramics. The works demonstrate how traditional techniques are combined with contemporary influences to express new ideas. From the Fire marks the first time a Korean curator has selected contemporary ceramic works by Korean artists for exhibition in North America.

The curator, Ms. Cho Chung Hyun, is a ceramic artist and professor at the College of Art, Ewha Womans University, in Seoul, Korea. Most of the 54 artists in the exhibition donated select works to venues on the national tour. A fully-illustrated exhibition catalogue was produced for the exhibition.

Forbidden Art

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Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde

“This ambitious show, with its careful attention to trends and movements and its exposure of the whole gamut of postwar Soviet art, adds up to a surprisingly rich survey.”

– Grace Glueck, The New York Times  

“It’s one of the best collections in the world of Russian art.”

– Aleksander Borosky, curator, Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg

Forbidden Art: The Postwar Russian Avant-Garde was an exhibition that explored a fascinating period in Russian art history, when artists boldly defied aesthetic conventions imposed by state censorship.

Comprising works of painting, photography, and sculpture from the collection of Yuri Traisman, a Russian émigré, Forbidden Art dispels the notion that Russia was artistically infertile under the repressive rule of the Stalinist state. Traisman built his collection over the course of nearly 30 years, and his dedicated research into Russian artists who, in the spirit of creative freedom, defied the aesthetic restrictions imposed by Stalin and his successors, illuminates the social and artistic rebellion of a suppressed people and culture.

Abstract and metaphoric artworks critique the Russian media as well as the pervasive effects of Social Realist ideology upon daily life during the Cold War. In a daring fight for artistic freedom, now referred to as the “second Russian Avant-Garde movement,” Soviet artists of many backgrounds—the Reform, Radical and Leningrad schools; Sots art; Moscow conceptualism; and more—were able to adopt and transform existing avant-garde traditions to express their artistic and political will.

This exhibition featured works by Grisha Bruskin, Dmitrii Krasnopevtsev, Natalia Nestervoa, Boris Orlov, Alexandr Rodchenko, Vadim Sidur, and Vladimir Stenberg.

Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful

Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful

“Turning away from traditional European models of homes and their furnishings, this bold yet practical visionary developed a truly American style of architecture, creating a harmony of house and nature by attuning a dwelling to its surrounding landscape.”

– Grace Glueck, New York Times

“By playing down the drama of Wright’s life and focusing on his material contributions, the exhibition succeeds in explaining how he could produce some of the most comforting and soulful houses ever built.”

– Juanita Dugdale, Art New England

During his remarkably prolific 70-year career, Frank Lloyd Wright was committed not only to the development of a truly American style of architecture but also to the creation of furnishings and accessories that were both functional and beautiful, to enhance the surroundings in his revolutionary spaces. Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautifulpresented his passion for creating a new way of life for Americans through architecture. In particular, the exhibition focused on his skill in creating harmony between architectural structure and interior design while fulfilling the needs of a modern, American lifestyle. The exhibition presented more than 100 original objects, including furniture, metalwork, textiles, original drawings, publications, and accessories from the collection of the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and other public and private collections.

The exhibition was divided into three themes that embodied the philosophy and methods of the “house beautiful.” First, the exhibition revealed how Wright sought to develop a modern interior reflective of a uniquely American spirit of democracy and individual freedom. Next, the exhibition tracked his development in integrating the space with furnishings and archi­tectural elements; lastly, it documented his efforts to incorporate these ideas into the homes of average Americans. Each section of the exhibition included wall panels of period and contem­porary photographs of Wright interiors, to provide the context for the original objects on view.

This exhibition was curated by Virginia T. Boyd, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the Textiles and Design program. The exhibition tour was organized by International Arts & Artists in cooperation with The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, Scottsdale, AZ, USA. A fully illustrated catalogue was produced for this tour.

Intent to Deceive

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Intent to Deceive: Fakes and Forgeries in the Art World

“The exhibition looks at five of the most notorious forgers or fakers of the last 100 years, their methods, their personalities and their downfalls.”

– Elaine Warner, Edmondsun.com

 

“The arrangement encourages visitors to try their eyes at determining which is the verified original and which the top-notch phony, as well as introducing them to a fascinating underworld of names that—had everything gone as planned—no one would have known.”

– Steve Gill, Slice

This groundbreaking exhibition spotlighted some of the world’s most notorious con-artists, illuminating their dubious legacies and examining how—by way of talent, charm, and audacity—they managed to beguile and assault the art world for much of the 20th century, right up to the present day.

Several ingenious forgers were profiled in this exhibition of over 60 works of art, representing some of the most infamous art scandals of the last century. Han van Meegeren, Elmyr de Hory, and Eric Hebborn all shook the art world with their exploits, garnering them worldwide notoriety but also—for each—untimely death. More recently, John Myatt and Mark Landis have been in the news for their prolific and stylistically diverse art frauds, landing one in jail. Intent to Deceive provides a fascinating look into the psyche of those geniuses who did not choose, or were incapable of choosing, to pursue a legitimate artistic career.

Included with each forger’s profile was a sampling of their original works, along with personal effects, ephemera, photographs, film clips, and representations of the materials and techniques they used to create these convincing artworks. Of particular interest were the accounts of how art experts were able to use new technologies to unveil their fraudulence.

Original works by renowned artists such as Charles Courtney Curran, Honoré Daumier, Raoul Dufy, Philip de Lászlό, Henri Matisse, Joan Mirό, Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Paul Signac, Maurice de Vlaminck and others were juxtaposed with the art of the world’s most accomplished art forgers to test perceptions of authenticity.

The ultimate question posed by Intent to Deceive is whether the revelation of a painting’s unsavory history actually makes it any less of a work of art. Does the discovery of a fake change our relationship with a painting? Admirers and collectors of the work of several contemporary forgers maintain that they possess great art, no matter that they are forgeries. The fakery of these works is often brilliant in itself, and indeed, their murky histories make them all the more interesting, since they add stories and drama that are as fascinating as the images on their canvases.

This exhibition was organized by International Arts & Artists and curated by Colette Loll. For more information on this project, please go to http://www.intenttodeceive.org/

Passionate Observer

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Passionate Observer: Eudora Welty among Artists of the Thirties

“Photography taught me that to be able to capture transience, by being ready to click the shutter at the crucial moment, was the greatest need I had.”

— Eudora Welty

“[A] stirring and deeply personal glimpse into the lives of everyday people struggling to maintain dignity and courage in the face of one of the greatest catastrophes to hit America.”

— AAA Southern Traveler

A compassionate observer of the world as well as a passionate image-maker, Eudora Welty was a visual artist who used the camera with the same poetic facility as she used language as a writer. While Welty felt her primary medium was language, she continued to use a camera until 1950, when she left her Rolleiflex on a bench in the Paris Metro and, out of anger at her own carelessness, did not replace it.

This provocative exhibition developed by the Mississippi Museum of Art comprises over 100 works—all by notable American artists of the 1930s—including photographs, paintings, drawings, and prints.  At the center are Eudora Welty’s dramatic Depression-era photographs of Mississippi, Louisiana, and New York. Welty’s photographs from the thirties are placed alongside works by the artists Edward Hopper and Thomas Hart Benton; photographers Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, Ben Shahn, Margaret Bourke-White, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott, and Dorothea Lange; and the Southern artists Walter Anderson, William Hollingsworth, Marie Hull, and Karl Wolfe. This juxtaposition opens an eloquent dialogue between Welty’s artistic motivation and the visual interpretations of other artists from this period.