Columbus Monthly / February 2011 / Artists for the ages

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Artists for the ages

Four masters of their crafts—Marc Chagall, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt and Frank Lloyd Wright—are being examined in special exhibits.

If you’re looking for a getaway that includes great works of art and compelling examinations of creativity, you’re in luck: There are some fascinating exhibits on display in 2011 that are within easy driving distance of Columbus.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art takes visitors into the heart of the pre-war Parisian art community with Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle. Across town, the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia whisks visitors back several centuries and relocates them to Italy with Leonardo da Vinci’s Workshop: Inventor, Artist, Dreamer. Visitors to the Detroit Institute of Art can enjoy the works of a Dutch master with Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus. And an American artist of a different sort is the subject of Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

What these exhibits share is a desire to look at the evolving nature of creative genius over the life of the artist.

 

Chagall and friends

In the first few decades of the 20th century, Paris had a special attraction for artists from Eastern Europe who were lured by the city’s spirit of openness and creativity. The influence of the City of Light on these artists is the focus of a new exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle, running March 1 through July 10.

“Chagall arrives in Paris in May 1911 and he’s immersed in an international avant-garde,” says Michael Taylor, the museum’s curator of modern art. “I wanted to see how that avant-garde developed over the next 15 years.”

Chagall had a close relationship with many other Eastern European artists who had relocated to Paris. In fact, they shared a common workspace, which led to their deep influence on one another. “The organizing principle [for the exhibition] is around the place they lived, which was called ‘La Ruche,’ which means ‘The Beehive,’ ” Taylor says. The name came from the site’s honeycomb-like maze of artists’ studios. “These artists were living on top of one another, seeing each other’s work and becoming inspired by that,” he adds.

The exhibition includes around 40 paintings and sculptures by these artists, and Taylor says he hopes the collection makes the case that Chagall was deeply influenced by the artists around him, despite Chagall’s claims to the contrary.

Chagall’s first exposure to Cubism after moving to Paris greatly altered his work. But at the same time, his art maintained ties to the Eastern European Jewish community he came from, Taylor says. “Chagall uses the fragmentation of Cubism, but he maintains the interest in the life he would have seen in Russia and the traditions and customs he would have grown up with,” he says. This is illustrated in the exhibit’s namesake work, “Paris Through the Window,” a vivid piece on loan from the Guggenheim Museum in New York. “In the corner of the canvas is this figure that is looking toward both east and west,” Taylor says.

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia; (215) 763-8100, philamuseum.org.

 

The Wright design

To mark the 100th anniversary of Taliesin—Frank Lloyd Wright’s home, studio and school in Spring Green, Wisconsin—the Milwaukee Art Museum is presenting Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century Feb. 12 through May 15. The exhibit features more than 150 of the acclaimed architect’s works, including drawings, scale models, furniture and photography.

The museum worked with the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation in Arizona as well as former clients of Wright to create a survey of his work, including 33 drawings that have never previously been exhibited, says Brady Roberts, chief curator at the museum. “It’s going to be a very rich, dense and beautiful look at America’s best-known architect.”

One of the things the show demonstrates is how Wright was ahead of his time. “There are lessons in Wright’s architecture that are valuable to urban planners today,” Roberts says. For example, Wright was an early pioneer in prefab housing, a fan of natural lighting and an advocate of small but well-designed homes. He also instituted techniques that reduced construction waste. “If you look at these designs, they are very eloquent and beautiful, and have aspects of sustainability,” he says.

The exhibition will examine many of Wright’s major projects, including Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois; Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; the Johnson Wax building in Racine, Wisconsin; Taliesin in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Drawings, models and videos are among the collection, including one video that chronicles the changing sights and sounds around Fallingwater, the house that is considered by many to be Wright’s masterpiece. “Over a six-minute loop, you’ll see the change from spring to summer to fall to winter,” Roberts says.

In addition to highlighting his completed works, the exhibit also focuses on one of his most ambitious, but unrealized projects—the Living City. This planned community dating to 1958 took Wright’s design vision and applied it to an entire city. Drawings and designs for the city include aspects that may seem out of date to 21st-century eyes, Roberts says, such as spaceship-looking helicopters. “It’s very retro-futuristic.”

Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Dr., Milwaukee; (414) 224-3200, mam.org.

 

Da Vinci in 3D

Those looking for greater insight into the man who embodies the term “Renaissance man” should check out Leonardo da Vinci’s Workshop: Inventor, Artist, Dreamer at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia Feb. 5 through May 22.

Visitors will learn about the creative genius through presentations of his works, drawings and innovations, including models of some of his most intriguing ideas and inventions. The goal is to take some of da Vinci’s top renderings and bring them into the real world, says Steve Snyder, vice president of exhibit and program development at the Franklin Institute. “These are some of his most brilliant ideas rendered into three-dimensional form,” he says. “It’s taking the pictures and imaginings and brilliance of Leonardo and making them come to life.”

Da Vinci’s drawings were not only technically sophisticated for their time, but also were true works of art, Snyder says. In that respect, the exhibit leaves visitors with insight into the depth of talent da Vinci possessed. “He’s an artist and an engineer and an inventor all rolled into one,” Snyder says. “It gives you an inkling into just how brilliant and clever this man was.”

The Franklin Institute is a hands-on science and technology museum, similar to COSI. As such, the exhibit features plenty of interactivity. There are displays that allow visitors to explore da Vinci’s creations in depth, Snyder says. “You can flip through pages of his codices and render his drawings in 3D.”

The exhibit, curated by da Vinci experts in Milan, also includes a live show on the artist’s life and work and a workshop where participants challenge their creative thinking as the Renaissance inventor once did. “They can put themselves in Leonardo’s place and see what they can come up with,” Snyder says.

Franklin Institute, 222 N. 20th St., Philadelphia; (215) 448-1200, fi.edu.

 

The many faces of Jesus

Later in the year, the Detroit Institute of Art will give visitors a portrait of an evolving artist with Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, running Nov. 20, 2011, through Feb. 12, 2012. The exhibition features eight paintings by Rembrandt and his students that focus on the face of Jesus.

In his early years, Rembrandt van Rijn portrayed Jesus as many 17th-century European artists did—as a blond-haired, blue-eyed European, says Graham W.J. Beal, director of the institute. But as the years went by, the Dutch artist began painting Jesus more and more as a Middle Eastern Jew. “He was the first Western artist to say that Jesus was a Jew and depict him as such,” Beal says.

The portrayals of Jesus show Rembrandt’s “own spiritual journey as well,” Beal says. “It culminates in a painting that is now at the Louvre, ‘The Supper at Emmaus,’ which is part of this exhibit.”

Visitors also will see Rembrandt’s growing confidence in his own vision. Early paintings followed Baroque traditions, with lots of movement and gestures, Beal says. “He was out to show that he was as good as Rubens.” But the paintings become more inward-looking and contemplative, Beal says, “as Rembrandt matures and gets beat up a little in life.” One challenge the artist faced was a financial collapse that ended in bankruptcy. Although he was able to continue working, Beal says his suffering found its way into his work. “You can see this was a changed man.”

The personal, spiritual and artistic changes that affected his work are the focus of Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus, according to Beal. “It’s going to be a very focused and contemplative exhibition. We’re very much working on setting the cultural framework,” he says. “It looks not only at Rembrandt, but also at why he worked the way he did and chose this approach to Jesus, which was very unusual and remained unusual through the 19th century.”

Detroit Institute of Art, 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit; (313) 833-7900, dia.org.