Tag Archives: Visual arts

A brand new have a look at Frank Lloyd Wright’s textiles, dwelling items

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A small however essential exhibit on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork explores a little-known aspect of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s creations: his line of wallpapers, printed and woven textiles, and different dwelling items designed for the general public.

“Frank Lloyd Wright Textiles: The Taliesin Line, 1955-60” stays on view by way of Apr. 5, 2020. It reveals how, in 1954, Wright entered into his first business enterprise, designing a line of reasonably priced dwelling merchandise aimed on the common shopper. The designs had been based mostly on Wright’s architectural designs and impressed by his buildings.

The road was named Taliesin, after his houses and studios in Wisconsin and Arizona, and was out there solely by way of licensed sellers.

Wright entered into the enterprise on the urging of his buddy Elizabeth Gordon, editor of Home Lovely journal.

“The intention was that this was a method for his aesthetic to succeed in a a lot bigger viewers,” says Amelia Peck, curator of ornamental arts within the Met’s American Wing, and supervising curator of the Antonia Ratti Textile Heart there.

Along with designing reasonably priced wallpapers and textiles for F. Schumacher and Co., Wright agreed to design furnishings (for Heritage-Hendredon), paints (Martin-Senour), rugs (Karastan) and residential accent items, made by Minic Equipment.

“Wright did not belief inside decorators. He known as them ‘inferior desecrators,'” says Peck, including that one other aim of the Wright-approved wallpapers and textiles for upholstery and material was to assist folks get his aesthetic proper.

To publicize the Taliesin Line of merchandise, the November 1955 concern of Home Lovely was dedicated to Wright’s work, presenting your entire assortment. Finally, although, solely the textiles, wallpaper, paint and furnishings had been produced.

Whereas Wright’s paints and furnishings didn’t meet with a lot success, the wallpapers and textiles did. Many remained in manufacturing for a decade, with some up to date variations rereleased in 1986 and once more as not too long ago as 2017.

The exhibit options an unlimited authentic pattern ebook, one in all solely 100 copies of “Schumacher’s Taliesin Line of Ornamental Materials and Wallpapers Designed by Frank Lloyd Wright” (1955). The works had been a collaboration between Wright, his apprentices and Schumacher, however Wright had remaining approval, Peck says.

The exhibit additionally options examples of a few of Wright’s wallpapers, and printed and woven materials.

Whereas the Japanese affect evident in most of the items is not any shock, given Wright’s travels to Asia and the way in which he integrated Asian components in his architectural designs, among the colours will come as a shock. Removed from the muted neutrals widespread at the moment, most of the hues are vivid, comparable to dazzling shades of turquoise. Much more stunning, among the woven upholstery materials are interwoven with Lurex, including a lower than understated little bit of sparkle.

“You do not consider Wright as a shiny type of man, however he accredited it,” she says.

Different materials are surprisingly forward-looking. Though designed within the late ’50s, a few of Wright’s patterns appear extra harking back to the ’60s, that includes brilliant curvy patterns in dazzling colours.

The set up additionally options two Minic vases (which Wright known as “weed holders”) in mahogany with steel lining.

A few of the textiles are nonetheless out there from Schumacher, which launched anniversary editions of some, though the colours now out there are typically extra muted, Peck says.

The entire pages of the Taliesin Line pattern ebook have been newly photographed and may be considered on the museum’s web site, together with all 29 items of Wright cloth which can be within the Met’s assortment.

To place the textiles in context, guests are inspired to mix a go to to the textile set up with a go to to a separate set up of Wright’s architectural drawings, “Frank Lloyd Wright: Designs for Francis and Mary Little,” on view by way of Nov. 12. It options drawings and letters exploring Wright’s working relationship with the Littles, for whom he constructed a home in Peoria, Illinois, and one other in Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota.

The museum additionally options “Dwelling Room from Francis W. Little Home, 1912-14,” a everlasting set up that was initially the lounge of the Littles’ summer time dwelling in a suburb of Minneapolis. The room reveals the extent to which Wright’s structure and decor are interconnected.

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Painting, stolen by Nazi soldier, is back in Florence museum

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A Dutch still-life painting, stolen by retreating Nazis and sent by a German soldier as a present to his wife, came back to a Florence museum on Friday, thanks largely to a relentless campaign by the Uffizi Galleries’ director, a German.

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The foreign ministers of German and Italy were on hand Friday at Palazzo Pitti, a Renaissance palace that is part of the Uffizi Galleries, for the unveiling of “Flower Vase,” a masterpiece by Jan van Huysum, an early 18th-century artist whose exquisitely detailed still-life works were highly sought in his day.

Uffizi director Eike Schmidt earlier this year urged his native country to return the work. He had posted on a gallery wall three labels where the painting had hung before being taken during World War II: “stolen,” the labels read in Italian, English and German.

His homeland, Schmidt said at the time, had a “moral duty” to return the work.

Italian Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero hailed the “civic and moral courage of a German director of an Italian museum” in pursuing the painting’s return. As did his German counterpart, Moavero hailed the happy ending, saying it was achieved through “real Europeanism, of concrete facts” and not just words.

He revealed to reporters that the painting’s return was discussed, among other matters, during bilateral talks between Italy and Germany.

“Flower Vase” is so realistic it has been likened to a photograph. Van Huysum used a magnifying glass to study his subjects. Ripples are visible in insects’ transparent wings, to name just one striking detail on the returned painting.

The painting was acquired in 1824 by a grand duke of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, which followed the Medicis in residing in the palace in Florence.

Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, the palace’s artworks were packed for safekeeping into wooden crates and moved from villa to villa. When the Germany army was retreating, the crates were added to other war booty and eventually ended up in Bolzano, an Alpine city near Austria. There the crate containing “Flower Vase” was opened, and in July 1944, a German soldier sent the painting to his wife in Germany.

Minister Moavero quoted the soldier as writing instructions to his wife to “put it in a gilded frame.”

The painting’s whereabouts appeared to be a mystery until a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Starting in 1991, the German family repeatedly tried to sell the painting to Italy via intermediaries, “threatening to give it to a third party or even destroy it if a ransom wasn’t paid,” the Italian culture ministry said. The latest approach for money was made to the Uffizi in 2016, it said.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Mass thanked Schmidt for campaigning so passionately for the painting’s return. “Here is its place, here is where it belongs,” he said.

At a time of tensions among many European Union allies over migrant issues, Maas saw inspiration in the successful artwork diplomacy. He likened an EU “without “diversity, without solidarity” to a “museum without paintings on display, a vase without flowers.”

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D’Emilio reported from Rome.

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Frances D’Emilio is on twitter at www.twitter.com/fdemilio



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Exuberant Met exhibit explores the art of rock ‘n’ roll

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Museum exhibits tend to be quiet. Not this one.

In “Play It Loud,” an exuberant show that can be heard as well as seen, the Metropolitan Museum of Art takes on the history of rock ‘n’ roll through iconic instruments on loan from some of rock’s biggest names. There are flamboyant costumes worn by Prince and Jimmy Page, videotaped interviews with “guitar gods,” even shattered guitars.

The show runs here from April 8 through Oct. 1 before traveling to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in Cleveland, where it will be on view from Nov. 20, 2019 through Sept. 13, 2020.

“We’re looking at rock ‘n’ roll instruments as an art. They serve as muses, tools and visual icons, and many of them are hand-painted and lovingly designed,” says Jayson Kerr Dobney, curator in charge of the department of musical instruments at the Met. He organized “Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll,” with Craig J. Inciardi, curator and director of acquisitions at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

For anyone who ever dreamed of climbing onstage at a rock concert for a closer look, this may be your best shot.

“Instruments are some of the most personal objects connected to musicians, but as audience members we are primarily used to seeing them from far away, up on a stage in performance. This exhibition will provide a rare opportunity to examine some of rock ‘n’ roll’s most iconic objects up close,” says Dobney.

Highlights include Chuck Berry’s ES-350T guitar (at the entrance to the exhibit), John Lennon’s 12-string Rickenbacker 325, an electric 500/1 “violin” bass on loan from Paul McCartney, Keith Moon’s drum set, and the white Stratocaster played at Woodstock by Jimi Hendrix.

Interviewed by The Associated Press on Monday, Page, the guitarist and founder of Led Zeppelin, said that when curators approached him and explained their vision of the exhibit — you approach it through the Greco-Roman art galleries and then suddenly come upon Berry’s guitar — he was all in.

“My guitar was confiscated if I took it to the school field to play,” he says. “That’s the kind of respect given to guitars in those days.

“So to see guitars from people I listen to . it’s absolutely phenomenal. It’s humbling.”

Over 130 instruments are featured in the show, including ones played and beloved by the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, The Rolling Stones, The Grateful Dead, Lady Gaga, Joan Jett, Metallica, Steve Miller, Page and other rock ‘n’ roll greats. The collection spans 1939 to 2017. All the instruments are on loan, most by the musicians themselves, although Miller has promised to donate to the Met his 1961 Les Paul TV Special guitar, painted by surfboard artist Bob Cantrell.

The show features its own rock ‘n’ roll soundtrack and is organized in thematic sections.

“Setting the Stage” explores rock’s early days in the American South of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when pianos, saxophones and acoustic guitars were among the instruments of choice. Soon, Berry helped revolutionize the sound, establishing the electric guitar as the genre’s primary voice and visual icon.

Also featured is a setup like that used by the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1964. After that performance, “thousands of rock bands were formed using that same lineup: two guitars, a bass and a drum set,” says Dobney.

The “Guitar Gods” section traces that phrase to Eric Clapton’s stardom and a piece of 1966 graffiti in London proclaiming, “Clapton is God.” Others dubbed guitar gods included Page, Jeff Beck, Pete Townsend and Hendrix. All exemplified virtuoso musicianship and awe-inspiring swagger. By the 1970s, women, too, were fronting bands and finding platforms for their own personae and skills, Dobney says.

“The Rhythm Section” explores the sources of the genre’s powerful rhythms, with accented backbeats created using a drum set and electric bass guitar.

Even as guitars were lovingly painted, and sometimes even built by the musicians who played them (like Eddie Van Halen’s red and white “Frankenstein” guitar, featuring a Fender-style body and neck with Gibson electronics), instruments were also famously destroyed by rock stars as part of their act.

“It may be the only musical genre where destruction of instruments became a part of the performance,” Dobney says.

Featured is a fragment of a Hendrix guitar that he set on fire and smashed onstage at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967; a Gibson SG Special guitar destroyed by Townsend during a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz for Rolling Stone (and preserved in Lucite); and a modified Hammond L-100 organ used by Keith Emerson as a “stunt instrument,” which he would jump on, pull on top of himself, stick knives in and — in this instrument’s case — set ablaze during performances.

“Expanding the Band” explores the way the classic four-piece rock band was augmented by instruments like dulcimers, sitars and a range of experimental keyboards to expand the sound.

“Creating an Image” opens with an enormous, jagged electric piano housed in acrylic with built-in lights, owned by Lady Gaga. That section also includes Prince’s “Love Symbol” guitar and a dragon-embroidered outfit once worn by Page.

A wall image of Springsteen taken from behind with his guitar over his shoulder illustrates how for some stars, the guitar became almost an extension of their body.

“Creating a Sound” explores the technical side of rock music, with the amps, guitars and rigs used by Page, Keith Richards, Van Halen and Tom Morello. Each of the four rigs is accompanied by a videotaped interview with the artist explaining how they created their unique sound.

The show ends with footage of some of rock’s most iconic moments, along with decades of posters advertising groundbreaking concerts.

“Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock and Roll” is accompanied by a hefty and detailed catalog of the same name (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by Yale University Press, 2019).

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