calendario eventi  :: 

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10/6/2006

Summer exhibitions

Los Angeles County Museum of Art - LACMA, Los Angeles

David Hockney Portraits
June 11 - September 4, 2006

What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing: you wouldn’t be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.
David Hockney

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents David Hockney Portraits, the first exhibition devoted solely to Hockney’s portraiture, one of the most significant facets of his work. Organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with LACMA and Senior Curator of Modern Art Stephanie Barron, the groundbreaking exhibition surveys half a century of the artist's career, revealing some of his most profound compositions, new and old.

For decades, Hockney has revisited the same intimate subjects—friends, family, lovers, and even himself—unveiling the often circular nature of his artistic preoccupation and also underscoring the range of his creative practice. In part because of his pioneering portraits, Hockney rapidly became the best- known British artist of his generation. It is through the lens of Los Angeles, however, that much of his work is viewed. Fittingly then, David Hockney Portraits comes to L.A.—the city the artist has long called home—and to LACMA, which has already presented two previous exhibitions devoted to the artist.

“With this exhibition, we are able to experience half a century of Hockney portraits that are both immediate and intimate depictions of his sitters," said Stephanie Barron. “In these sustained investigations of faces of the individuals he loves and appreciates, the artist explores his own relationships; the joys and sorrows of his inner circle; and even the looming realities of illness and death. Whether in small-scale, delicate line drawings, large-scale paintings, or bold, over size watercolors, time and again, these portraits reveal the close relationship that Hockney has had with many of the subjects."

Approximately 160 examples of Hockney’s most personal—and powerful—works are included in the exhibition, starting with the artist’s first forays into portraiture. It is these seminal, small-scale pen and ink drawings, created during Hockney’s years as a student at Bradford School of Art and then at the Royal College of Art in London, that open the exhibition. Opposing in size, but at least equal in significance, are the portraits that Hockney began producing nearly a decade later. The works, just under life size and often featuring two people, include such major canvases as Henry Geldzahler and Christopher Scott (1969), Mr. and Mrs. Clark and Percy (1970 - 71), Self Portrait with Blue Guitar (1977), Beverly Hills Housewife (1966) and My Parents (1977). Though Hockney is perhaps best known for these iconic portraits, he continued to innovate through his “studio visitor" series, which is characterized by a intense body of work over a relatively short period of time: the small scale Malibu portraits of 1989, the digital photo collages of 1990 - 91, and the camera lucida drawings of 1999, all of which capture visitors to Hockney’s studio or home.

David Hockney Portraits concludes with the artist's most recent work, marking his return to large-scale portraits. As with his earlier paintings, Hockney focuses on couples, eagerly examining their relationships, and also the link between the artist and the sitters. This latest group also includes heroic, single-standing figures and seated conversation-style arrangements. Painted in both watercolors and oils, these pieces hearken back to his grand portraits of the 1960s and 70s, and are among Hockney’s most expressive, majestic, and remarkable works.

The exhibition offers visitors the unique opportunity to view many portraits never before seen together, as well as Hockney’s own sketchbooks and preparatory photographs from the 1960s. Together, these works provide unprecedented insight into the artist's intense observations of the people he chronicled repeatedly. Along with a variety of media—painting, drawing, etching, watercolor, and photography—and an impressive cache of half a century's work, David Hockney Portraits is the most comprehensive assembly of Hockney's portraiture ever shown publicly, and offers a visual diary of the artist’s life, friendships, and loves spanning his celebrated forty-year career.

This exhibition was curated by Sarah Howgate and Barbara Stern Shapiro and organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

LACMA Coordinating Curator: Stephanie Barron
About LACMA: In April 2006, Michael Govan became CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). He is the seventh person to hold the position of Director in the museum’s 41- year history. Established as an independent institution in 1965, LACMA has assembled a permanent collection that includes approximately 100,000 works of art spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present, making it the premier encyclopedic visual arts museum in the western United States. Located in the heart of one of the most culturally diverse cities in the world, the museum uses its collection and resources to provide a variety of educational and cultural experiences for the people who live in, work in, and visit Los Angeles. LACMA offers an outstanding schedule of special exhibitions, as well as lectures, classes, family activities, film programs and world- class musical events.

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A Curator’s Eye: The Visual Legacy of Robert A. Sobieszek
Through August 20, 2006

For fifteen years, Robert A. Sobieszek shepherded LACMA’s permanent collection of photographs with the highly refined visual understanding of an historian, the intellectual rigor and sophistication of an academic, the critical eye and sensitivity of a connoisseur, and the exuberance and passion of a man totally enthralled by photographers, photographs, and visual culture. This exhibition will feature pivotal works from the permanent collection acquired during Sobieszek’s tenure that have substantially shaped the direction and strengths of the Department of Photographs. The exhibition will celebrate the collection as well as the visual sensibility that has defined it. Featuring works of important historical significance, works by acknowledged masters of the medium, as well as those by contemporary artists, the exhibition will give a sense of the character of the collection, a character that is as elegantly complex as the curator under whose guidance it was shaped.

The exhibition includes more than 30 framed works. Additionally, a Powerpoint presentation highlighting additional components in the photography permanent collection will be on display.

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Gustav Klimt
Through June 30, 2006

Gustav Klimt: Five Paintings from the Collection of Ferdinand and Adele Bloch-Bauer LACMA is honored to announce a special exhibition of five important paintings by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918). The paintings were recently returned by the Austrian government to the family of Maria Altmann, of Los Angeles, following a lengthy legal dispute over the rightful ownership of these works stolen by the Nazi regime.

The five masterpieces by Klimt epitomize the height of Viennese Jugendstil. They include two portraits of Maria Altmann’s aunt, Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881-1925) and three landscapes, Beechwood (1903), Apple Tree I (ca. 1911), and Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter (1916). The five paintings, which until recently hung in the Austrian Gallery Belvedere in Vienna, have never before been shown together in the United States.

This exhibition was organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and made possible through the generosity of The Broad Art Foundation, the Office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, Nancy and Dick Riordan, AT&T, Herta and Paul Amir, Wallis Annenberg and the Annenberg Foundation, Kathy and Frank Baxter, The Gordon Family Foundation, Ellen and Andrew Hauptman, Nina and Bobby Kotick, the Robert F. Maguire III Family, the Peter Norton Family Foundation, Ted Slavin and Patricia Rubin, Terry and Lionel Bell, Lee and Lawrence Ramer, and the Robert Gore Rifkind Foundation.

Special support for this exhibition was provided by LACMA's Art Museum Council.

Image: David Hockney

LACMA is located at 5905 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles CA, 90036.

Museum Hours: Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, noon-8 pm; Friday, noon-9 pm; Saturday and Sunday, 11 am-8 pm; closed Wednesday, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Call 323 857-6000.

General LACMA Admission: Adults $9; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 62+ $5. Admission (except to specially ticketed exhibitions) is free every evening after 5 pm, the second Tuesday of every month, and for children 17 and under.

This is a specially ticketed exhibition: Adults $15; students 18+ with ID and senior citizens 65+ $12; children under 17 free - tickets are required; Groups (10 +) $10. For membership and ticketing information, please call 323 857-6151.

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