Room 504

 'New Expression in Germany and Austria'

In the years before World war l, artists in germany and Austria developed a provocative new approach based on high pitched color and jarring distortions of form.  Their focus on the human figure was in part a reaction to the rapid transformations affecting society-industrialization and urbanization, as well as changing attitudes to sexuality.

Expressionism, as such work came to be known, emerged in several distinctive artistic centers.  these included Vienna, where Egon Schiele forged a brand of searingly psychological portraiture; Munich where Vasily Kandinsky and others associated with Der Blaue Reiter [The Blue Rider] emphasized the spiritual values they found in nature and folk culture; Dresden, where Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and others in the Brucke [Bridge] group created scenes of their daily life that were, as Kirchner recalled, ' strange to the normal person ... [and] driven by a totally naive, pure need to bring art and life into harmony with each other'.  A desire for intensely personal expression and emotional authenticity unified the impulses of these artists.

Egon Schiele's 'Portrait of Gerti Schiele' from 1909 I found the most interesting in this room.  It is dark, shadowed, with an oddly shaped body and very odd hand.  What are we to make of this?  The tilt of the head and the 'exposure' of the nape of her neck with that black mass approaching gives me a sense of submission but not to a kiss.

The entrance to Room 504

Wilhelm Lehmbruck 'Kneeling Woman' 1911

And his 'Standing Youth' 1913

August Macke 'Lady in a Park' 1914.  Macke's death in the second month of the First World War at the age of 27 gives me pause to wonder at the presence of that dark figure on her left who looks to be tugging on her arm.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner 'Somersaulting Acrobatic Dancers' 1913

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Chestnut tree in the Moonlight', 1904

Vasily Kandinsky, 'Picture with an Archer' 1909

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, 'Nude Dancers', 1909

Max Pechstein, 'Reclining Nude with Cat' 1909

Egon Schiele, 'Standing Male Nude with Arm Raised', 1910

Egon Schiele, 'Girl putting on a shoe', 1910

Gabriele Munter, 'Interior', 1908

Emil Nolde, 'Young Couple', 1913

 We leave this young couple to visit Room 505

Room 503 mostly Picasso

 With 'Les Demoiselles d'Avignon at center stage this room shows Picasso's growth toward this extraordinary work.  Painted when Pablo Picasso was 25 years old; 'he jettisoned ideals of Beauty, banished conventions of perspective, and introduced forms inspired by African and Iberian art. Demoiselles has been traditionally presented as the beginning of Cubism-the art of splintered forms and shifting vantage points that revolutionized pictorial language in the years prior to World war 1. But this work may also be understood in other ways and other contexts. Here is a sculpture by Louise Bourgeois and Faith Ringgold, both made decades later, that enter into dialogue with Picasso's sexually charged scene, intensifying the questions that Demoiselles raises about representations of Women, power, and cultural difference.'

1907

'Still Life with Liqueur Bottle' 1909

'Bather' 1908-9

'Boy Leading a Horse' 1905-6.  And a very self-assured boy, no bridle, no rope, just his clenched fist to lead the horse. 

'Woman Plaiting Her Hair' 1906

'Two Nudes' 1906

'Head of a Sleeping Woman' 1907

'Fruit Dish' 1908-09

'The Reservoir' 1909

'Woman with Pears' 1909

'Woman's Head' 1909

'Ma Jolie' 1911-12

'Repose' 1908

'American People Series #20: Die', Faith Ringgold,1967.  Could also be called the '1960's Riots as 'Guernica'.

'Quarantania' Louise Bourgeois, 1970, another gathering of 5 figures.

 

Room 502 Photography

 " When photography and film first appeared in the nineteenth century, they fascinated viewers with their ability to not only record but to reinvent reality.  These technologies reinvented the visual culture of the time, providing an alternative to traditional methods of image-making involving hand, pen and brush.

Cameras served a variety of functions: they were used as documentary tools, instruments of science,and aids to artists and artisans working in other media. And they allowed photographers to create remarkable works of art.  Upending earlier modes of information distribution, they exposed social concerns and facilitated the development of new narrative forms.  By reproducing movement in unprecedented ways, and making the familiar unfamiliar and the invisible visible, these lens-based techniques contributed to shifting conceptions of time and space in the modern era."

X Ray, Unknown

Auguste Adolphe Bertsch, Chestnut Tree Wood, Vertical Section 

Unknown

'Mrs. Duckworth', Julia Margaret Cameron, 1867

Alfred Stieglitz, A Dirigible, 1910

Interior NYC Subway 14th Street to 42nd Street, 1905, American Mutoscope & Biograph Company, Film

Eugene Estanave, Wire Loop, 1908

Early X Ray, Unknown

Aerial Incendiary Bombs, 1917, Unknown

Human Facial Expression, Adrien Tournachon, 1862 

Anna Atkins, Polypodium Phegopteris, 1853

The following are from: Frances Benjamin Johnston 1899-1900 'The Hampton Album'

Those photographs by one of america's first female photojournalists document the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute[ now Hampton University] founded after the Civil war to provide education and practical training to African Americans and Native Americans.

Edward Muybridge, Movement of the hand, beating time, 1887

Unknown

Maurice Loewy, and Pierre Henri Puiseux, Lunar Photograph, 1903

'Realistic Travels' 1918

Unknown

Unknown

Charles Thurston Thompson series

Stills from Film:

'Lime Kiln Club Field Day', 1913, Edwin Middleton, T. Hayes Hunter, Klaw & Erlanger Biograph Co.  starring Bert Williams and the Darktown Follies stage company.