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MODERN ART MUSEUM OF FORT WORTH PRESENTS
September 30–December 30, 2007
Declaring Space includes works by four artists whose images had a dramatic effect on the complex development of space and color in abstract painting as it evolved in the years following World War II. The works of these artists do not represent a movement as much as a dramatic evolution of what has come to be thought of as "the field," an often misunderstood term in the vocabulary of postwar abstract art. While this term is often associated with American painting, specifically Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, Declaring Space addresses this concept from an international viewpoint, blurring national labels for a set of spatial themes that were evoked in abstract art in the latter half of the twentieth century, where the boundaries of traditional pictorial space were crossed and a new realm of abstract theater was engaged.
Mark Rothko
Rothko will be represented by six major canvases, presented in an environmental ensemble that approaches the ambient effect he often sought in his studio and public exhibitions. Among the paintings included will be such masterworks as White Band No. 27, 1954, and Red Over Dark Blue on Dark Gray, 1961.
Lucio Fontana
Fontana will be represented by a focused survey of his nearly five-decade career, spanning his earliest Spatial Concepts, in which small canvases evoke immense galaxies through swirling fields of paint subtly embedded with small stones and broken glass, to his famous Attessi, or cuts, in which the artist has used a sharp knife to literally slice through the canvas surface into another space. Throughout his career, Fontana was also a pioneer in creating room-sized environments that expressed his obsession with the mysteries of a pure space beyond the confines of the canvas. A centerpiece of the Fontana section will be a rare installation created by the artist in Germany in 1968. The installation, which was originally created for Documenta IV in Kassel, Germany, in 1968, consists of an entirely white labyrinth, including ceiling and floor, which surrounds a large plaster cut. This rare loan has been provided by The Fontana Foundation in Milan, Italy, and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Caracas.
Barnett Newman
Newman’s contribution will be a suite of some of his most iconic canvases, including the dark and brooding Abraham from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Name II, 1950, and Achilles, 1952, from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Ulysses, 1952, from the Menil Collection, Houston. Also included will be one of Newman’s most rigorous sculptures, Here III, 1965–66, from the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas.
Yves Klein
Klein will be represented by key monochrome "Propositions" dating between the early 1950s and the 1960s, including a large-scale floor piece made of pure pigment. Along with key monochromes, a number of special projects celebrating the artist’s invention of International Klein Blue will be presented. The glass containers that cap the three gallery pavilions of the Museum’s building will be filled with blue light. Concert, 1959, which consists of a chorus of thirty instrumentalists and thirty vocalists, performing fifteen minutes of sound and fifteen minutes of silence, will also be presented during the exhibition.
These four artists opened up the spatial and metaphysical possibilities of abstract painting in gradual but equally unprecedented ways. As the curator of the exhibition, Michael Auping, describes it, "Rothko sets the stage, draws back the curtains, if you will, on the opening up of this space. Newman emphatically declares what might be called a totemic space, while Fontana literally slices through the picture’s plane with a razor, and Klein, as he pronounced it, leaps into the void."
Auping is well-known as a curator and scholar of Abstract Expressionism. His exhibition Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments, which took place in 1987, is considered the most thorough survey of that movement in more than three decades. His book of the same title, published by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in association with Abrams, was pivotal in redefining the role of this important American movement. He has also organized exhibitions and written about Clyfford Still, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Philip Guston.
Catalogue
Special programs presented in conjunction with the exhibition include:
October 19, 6 pm–midnight
November 13, 7 pm,
LOCATION
Museum Gallery Hours
General Admission Prices (includes special exhibition)
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The Museum is closed Monday and holidays including New Year's Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Christmas. |
©2007, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth