Two exhibitions
dal 27/6/2007 al 30/7/2007
Segnalato da
27/6/2007
Two exhibitions
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich
From the early 1980s onwards, James Bishop produced his oil paintings increasingly on small-sized paper instead of large-scale canvas. The paint is applied in thin layers that act like a glaze, thus creating the impression of transparency to the colours on the painting ground. For the series Festival+ (Festspiel+) Kent Nagano is presenting a new artistic concept that engages new music and contemporary art in a dialogue: "...drawling and stretching and fainting in coils...", a project by Diana Thater.
James Bishop
curated by Michael Semff
To mark the 80th birthday of the American painter James Bishop, who has been
living close to Paris since 1958, the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung is
showing a selection of his works on paper.
From the early 1980s onwards, James Bishop produced his oil paintings
increasingly on small-sized paper instead of large-scale canvas. Ever since
the Sixties, Bishop’s gentle and carefully structured painting, which gained
early acclaim from leading critics on both sides of the Atlantic, lived from
the tension between solid, scaffold-like under-drawing and the flow of
colours blurring the structure.
To this day, the paint is applied in thin layers that act like a glaze, thus
creating the impression of transparency to the colours on the painting
ground. Whereas previously Bishop tended to use stronger colours, he later
turned increasingly to earth colours – shades of ochre, brown and grey in
their subtle tonal relationships. The barely noticeable style that
characterises Bishop’s use of brush or pencil has a stillness of both
movement and emotion peculiar to this artist.
To begin with, it was primarily the generation of American artists
immediately before him – in particular Rothko, Gorky, Newman, Reinhard and
Motherwell – who served as a model for Bishop’s oeuvre and dominated his
commitment to abstraction. By contrast, his life in Europe led to a growing
interest in the Italian Renaissance and a deeper affinity with the culture
of French painting as practised by such artists as Vuillard or Bonnard, and
also to the intellectual spirit of Morandi.
Particularly in the narrowly confined pictorial space of his paintings on
paper, rarely more than the size of an outstretched hand, Bishop succeeds in
creating one lyrical miracle after the other through the utmost intensity
and sublimation of form, light and colour. Despite Bishop’s reserved nature
and position outside the mainstream of the international art world – one he
chose for himself decades ago – the artist has shaped the Seventies
generation of abstract French painters in a quiet, yet all the more emphatic
way.
This is only the second time a German museum is holding an exhibition of
James Bishop’s work – almost fifteen years after the presentations in the
Kunstmuseum Winterthur, the Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Westfälische
Landesmuseum Münster.
It will be shown in the Josef Albers Museum, Quadrat Bottrop, from
09.12.2007 to 17.02.2008 and then – in a slightly modified form – be
transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago. Accompanying the exhibition is
a catalogue with circa 60 illustrations and essays by Heinz Liesbrock and
Michael Semff.
...............................
Festspiel+ 2007
…drawling and stretching and fainting in coils…
A project by Diana Thater
A collaboration between the Pinakothek der Moderne and the Bavarian State
Opera
For the series Festival+ (Festspiel+) Kent Nagano is presenting a new
artistic concept that engages new music and contemporary art in a dialogue:
As part of the Munich Opera Festival 2007 the Pinakothek der Moderne is
cooperating with the Bavarian State Opera to realise an extraordinary
project. It has invited the Los Angeles-based media and installation artist
Diana Thater (1962) to stage an exhibition at different points along the
route between the opera and the museum. For this six other artists, whom she
has chosen to join her, will be collaborating on the project. The
contributions of Leo Estevez, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe, T. Kelly Mason, Katy
Schimert, Jill Spector, Dawson Weber, together with that of Diana Thater
herself, are based on motifs taken from Lewis Carroll’s story »Alice in
Wonderland«. The book forms the point of departure for the opera of the same
name by the Korean composer Unsuk Chin. It will receive its premiere at the
Munich Opera Festival, directed and staged by Achim Freyer and with Kent
Nagano conducting.
The dialogue between the Fine Arts and music will be performed by the
Californian avant-garde saxophonist Ben Wendel and the German trumpeter Till
Brönner.
Opening 28.06.2007 h.17
Pinakothek der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40 - Munich