Exhibition Status: Past

Lethal Beauty

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Lethal Beauty: Samurai Weapons and Armor

“祇園精舎の鐘の聲、諸行無常の響き有り。 沙羅雙樹の花の色、盛者必衰の理を顯す。 驕れる者も久しからず、唯春の夜の夢の如し。 猛き者も遂には滅びぬ、偏に風の前の塵に同じ。”

“The sound of the Gion Shōja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the Sāla flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline. The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.”

— Excerpt from The Tale of the Heike, translated by Helen Craig McCullough

“The ‘Lethal Beauty’ show certainly delivers on both aspects of its title.”

— Donald Munro, The Fresno Bee

The striking duality of deadly weaponry forged with artistic grace was on full display in this remarkable exhibition of 63 works by master craftsmen of the 13th to 20th centuries. Lethal Beauty featured exquisite specimens of the art of war, including full suits of armor, helmets, warrior hats, face masks, long and short swords, daggers, rifles, and more.

Tales of the samurai have enchanted people since the 12th century and continue to delight and captivate audiences today. The oldest sword in the exhibition dated from the 13th century but was so finely crafted that it might have been new. The exhibition also showcased a pair of 17th century folding screens by a Kano school artist and a seven-piece set of 17th century sword fittings, both depicting battle scenes from The Tale of the Heike, the illustrious Japanese warrior epic that marks the dawn of samurai honor, valor, and fortitude.

The exhibition was accompanied by a color-illustrated catalogue and was curated by Dr. Andreas Marks, the director and chief curator of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture.

Runway Madness

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Runway Madness: Photographs by Lucian Perkins

“[B]eyond the smoke and mirrors of the runway lies another part of the fashion world. It is rich in emotion, complicated by personalities and human frailties, and rooted in commerce. These photographs capture fashion’s other face.”

– Robin Ghivan, Washington Post

“Runway Madness presents the photography of Lucian Perkins, a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer from the Washington Post. He has captured the ‘silent anguish of a designer putting himself and his art on the line,’ the panic of a split seam moments before a model takes to the runway, the world of fashion editors and buyers, and the critical eye of the press.”

– American Textile History Museum

The beat…the lights…the cascade of color… This arresting collection of photographs by Lucian Perkins, Washington Post photojournalist and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, is the total high fashion experience.

For this exhibition, Perkins trained his lens on the New York fashion shows, taking his audience backstage and to the front row for an eye-opening overview of the bewitching legerdemain of high-end fashion. Perkins captured the models up close and personal: Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Roshumba Williams, and many others, in high pomp as well as unguarded circumstance. Quotes from fashion insiders provide a running commentary, and captions by Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan explain each image.

These 64 black-and-white and color photographs vividly depict the fashion editors, journalists, and stars whose high visibility makes Fashion Week such a spectacle, as well as the backstage preparations, hopes, and exacting protocol that undergird today’s elite runway modeling.

Tradition in Transition

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Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs

“In pre-revolutionary Russia, it wasn’t enough simply to create a devotional painting of the Virgin Mary, the baby Jesus or a saint. These images needed to wear a fitted coat of gold or silver that partially covered the painting. It’s called an okladand some of the works featured in ‘Tradition in Transition’…possess these shimmering, halfway surreal coverings.”

– Robert L. Pincus, San Diego Union Tribune

“Whatever their origins, humble or exalted, these icons present Western viewers with a very different approach to prayer and faith.”

– Judy Wells, The Times-Union

Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs brings together 43 icons and oklads (icon covers) from three major private collections, including that of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. On tour for the first time, these works ranged from humble, roughly painted wooden icons of the peasant class to luxurious examples made of ivory or painted enamels and housed in gold or silver covers embellished with pearls and precious jewels.

Whether gilded or jeweled, or merely painted on plain wood, icons (sacred images of Christ, Mary, or the saints) were an essential spiritual aid for the Orthodox faithful: a focus for prayer and devotion and a conduit for divine mediation. Before the Romanovs, Russian icons hewed fairly closely to their stark Byzantine counterparts (simple lines, a flat aspect, elongated facial features), but with the ascension of the Westward-looking Tsar Peter the Great in the late 17th century, the influence of the Italian Renaissance brought a new realism, opulence, and spatial depth to their imagery. As a result, most of the Byzantine strictures gradually fell away, and by the 18thcentury elaborate icons set with jewels, pearls, and precious metals were being commissioned by the upper classes as valuable artworks in themselves. After the Bolshevik Revolution in the early 20th century, the Russian state began to divest itself of its “decadent” religious trappings, many of which were intentionally destroyed; but collectors (such as American heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post) were fortunate to be able to salvage some of the finest examples of the art of the icon.

Tradition in Transition was organized by the Hillwood Museum & Gardens in collaboration with the Steinhardt-Sherlock Trust and toured by International Arts & Artists.

Tradition Transformed

contemporary korean ceramics

Tradition Transformed: Contemporary Korean Ceramics

“The scale of the ceramic pieces in the exhibition is huge and there is a quiet startling exposition of many different approaches and techniques. The effect is mind-blowing and one turns with amazement from piece to piece thinking, as potters do, how beautiful / amazing this is and how is it made?”

– Pauline Roberts, Ceramics Ireland

“Exciting, adventurous and modern without being off the wall . . . There is everything here—imagination, power, vulnerability—and always the artist’s deep involvement with the clay.”

– Liz Baird, Belfast Telegraph

Tradition Transformed brings the finest of contemporary Korean ceramics to the countries of Europe. Represented are 29 contemporary Korean ceramic artists whose pieces incorporate traditional techniques with new influences and innovative methods to create provocative new sculpture. The exhibition includes 87 large- and small-scale works from the 1990s through 2006, many of them created especially for the tour.

This enchanting exhibition is a journey from the past into the present, recalling the history and beauty of the rolling hills and pastoral countryside of Korea; while the fresh designs, bold color, and geometric shapes dancing on the works express the inventive and modern spirit of the Korean people.

Tradition Transformed was made possible by the generous support of The Korea Foundation, Seoul, with additional support from the Korean Craft Promotional Foundation, Seoul, and the Han, Hyang Lim Gallery and the Jay Lee Collection, Seoul.

Tools In Motion

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Tools In Motion

Works from the Hechinger Collection

“Tools are what make us human and allow us to build civilization; they make work possible, they make ideas possible.”

— Charlie Brouwer

“Men have become the tools of their tools.”

– Henry David Thoreau

A selection of dynamic works from John Hechinger’s collection of tool-themed art, Tools in Motion celebrates the dignity of common tools and the intrinsic beauty of their design, where form and function are inextricably linked.

This one-of-a-kind exhibition features fifty stand-out pieces based on familiar forms—hammers, saws and wrenches—transformed into art of great imaginative power using a wide range of materials and techniques. Some of them, by way of texture, color, and the vigor of their design, evoke the rhythm and force of tools in action; others, like Maria Josephy’s whimsical “Prometheus,” meld history, wit, and common hardware into lighthearted odes to the timeless, panhuman nature of tools themselves. Other remarkable paintings and sculpture twist everyday tools into surreal forms or flesh-like configurations, highlighting the origin of tools as extensions of the hands and dreams of their human inventors. The artists in the exhibition range from emerging to world renowned, including notable figures such as Arman, Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, and Jacob Lawrence.

Tools As Art

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Tools As Art: The Hechinger Collection

“A worker may be the hammer’s master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.”

– Milan Kundera

“[Tools] have a history. In many of the religious panels of the Renaissance, you see the same tools as carpenters use today. They haven’t changed at all since then, so they’ve become a symbol of order and aspiration to me.”

— Jacob Lawrence

The Hechinger Collection celebrates the ubiquity of tools in our lives with art that magically transforms utilitarian objects into fanciful works of beauty, surprise and wit.

Unprecedented in its scope and singular appeal, Tools As Art explores the unsung elegance of tools with sixty-five highlights from the unique holdings of hardware pioneer John Hechinger. From a painting of a giant hammer pulling out a misplaced nail to a full-scale stepladder made entirely of paper, this landmark exhibition covers an astonishing range of media, materials, and themes, all of which invite us to look at everyday objects with new eyes. Some of them celebrate the quotidian grace of tools as instruments of creation that are beautiful in themselves; others transfigure the familiar with abstract or fanciful distortions, assemblages, or collages, melding tools into animal forms or landscapes or highlighting their tragic anomaly in a technological age.

The exhibition showcases emerging talent as well as renowned artists and photographers such as Jim Dine, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Estes, Wayne Thiebaud, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and William Eggleston. All share a deep affinity for everyday things, and it is this quality that makes their work so evocative.

Purchase the 92-page exhibition catalogue here

Structures of Nature

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Structures of Nature: Photographs by Andreas Feininger

“I am both overwhelmed and enchanted by the infinite richness of form, which even humble manifestations of nature can assume. I am awed by the degree of perfection of their structural elements relative to their functions, and moved by the exquisite beauty of many of their forms.”

– Andreas Feininger

“With all that’s big and new, the work of the past can still astonish us. Seashells, insects, and animal bones are objects of fascinating beauty in ‘Structures of Nature,’ a collection of work by Andreas Feininger.”

– Miranda Crowell, American Photo

“The diverse, surprising set of works by 20 photographers acts as an antidote to ignorance, presenting an alternative to the facile or anachronistic images transmitted by the American media.”

– Kevin J. Kelley, Seven Days: Vermont’s Independent Voice

The tiny veins of a leaf, the conical chambers of shells, the curve of a snake’s spine—these are the elements explored in minutest detail in Andreas Feininger’s nature photography.  He captures the beauty, structure, and function in the smallest attribute of animal and plant forms to reveal patterns of symmetry and order.

Raised in Germany and trained at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, Feininger worked as an architect under the legendary Le Corbusier before turning his energies and passion to photography in the early 1930s. After moving to America in 1939, he won fame for his monumental black-and-white urban portraits, notably those of Manhattan’s skyline, which he portrayed as both canyon-like and exquisitely ordered.  A brilliant technician as well as visual innovator, Feininger built his own customized telephoto lenses for his city photos, in addition to a number of close-up cameras for peering into the secrets of the natural world. Fascinated by nature since childhood—especially the intricate structures of organic forms—Feininger soon turned his architect’s eye to the minuscule but no less stunning vistas hidden in a shell or a bone or a leaf, and in the years following published, to much acclaim, his nature photography collections Trees (1968), Shells (1972) and Leaves (1972).

Structures of Nature was the first major exhibition of his nature studies in more than 25 years. All of the photographs in the exhibition were part of the permanent collection of the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, generously given by the Feininger family and the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York.

In Stabiano

in-Stabiano

In Stabiano: Exploring the Ancient Seaside Villas of the Roman Elite

“Once the most luxurious corner of the Roman Empire, Stabiano boasted a string of opulent villas overlooking the Bay of Naples where the Roman elite summered, entertained, and conducted business while strolling in elaborate courtyards.”

— Mary J. Loftus, Emory magazine

“[A] magnificent opportunity to experience the fruits of both ancient art and modern archaeology.”

— Donald Dusinberre, EU Jacksonville

“The diverse, surprising set of works by 20 photographers acts as an antidote to ignorance, presenting an alternative to the facile or anachronistic images transmitted by the American media.”

– Kevin J. Kelley, Seven Days: Vermont’s Independent Voice

In Stabiano presented the art objects and artifacts found in four ancient Roman villas located on a bluff overlooking the Bay of Naples. Stabiano (Stabiae in Latin) was a summer enclave for the moneyed elite of the Roman Empire, who competed with each other in establishing lavish country homes with rich furnishings, frescoes, mosaics, stuccos, statues, and other amenities to awe their guests and outshine their political and business rivals. The villas were buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which also preserved the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. The long-lost resort village is a recent archeological find, relatively unknown in Italy and the US but as well-preserved as its two Vesuvian neighbors and a fascinating window into the lives and tastes of Rome’s sybaritic beau monde.

The exhibition contained 72 objects—including frescoes, stucco artworks, sculpture, and other artifacts—that showcased the immense size, innovative design, and luxurious decoration of these villas.

In Stabiano was organized by the Superintendent of Archaeology of Pompeii, with assistance from the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation and International Arts & Artists.

SOARING VOICES

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Soaring Voices: Recent Ceramics by Women from Japan

“The vast and varied range of remarkable ceramics comprising Soaring Voices is a testament to the strong female clay-making culture that developed in the Jōmon period and grew to encompass generation upon generation of Japanese women artists.”– Susanna Brooks Lavallee, Morikami Newsletter

“To anyone who follows ceramics—especially Japanese ceramics—this is a not-to-be-missed show

– Janet Koplos, American Craft

For thousands of years, women in Japan have been involved in the making of ceramics, but with few exceptions their names have not been preserved. Soaring Voices bears powerful witness to a still-evolving renaissance of female preeminence in the medium.

Until the mid-twentieth century, ceramic studios in Japan were by tradition family-run establishments in which men controlled most aspects of production, from the processing of clay to the crafting and marketing of the finished works. This began to change in the 1950s, when the cultural upheavals of the post-war era—and the wide availability of mass-produced clay—ended male dominance in the field and launched a generation of self-taught female ceramists, who managed their own studios and brought a new sensibility to the ancient craft. This exhibition showcases, through 87 works by 25 women artists, contemporary interpretations of a traditional art form by way of a range of motifs inspired by the natural world: plants, shells, mountains, rivers, and the delicate play of light and shadow.

The Museum of Contemporary Ceramic Art at the Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shiga Prefecture, Japan, organized and debuted the exhibition in collaboration with hus-10, Inc., Tokyo, Japan. The exhibition traveled to the New Otani Art Museum, Tokyo, and to Shizuoka Art Gallery, Shizuoka, Japan, in 2008; then to the Musée National de Céramique in Sèvres, France, in 2009, before traveling to the US.

The exhibition was generously supported in part by the E. Rhodes & Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the S&R Foundation.

Making your Mark: Prints and Drawings from the Hechinger Collection

Making Your Mark: Prints and Drawings from the Hechinger Collection

“Because my eyes are old and have helped my hand dream of the thrill of making marks on paper, I can say I know more.”

– Jim Dine

Making Your Mark: Prints and Drawings from the Hechinger Collection presents 50 works on paper, including drawings, intaglio, planographic, photographs, screen prints, and reliefs. Exploring the intricacies of each medium, this exhibition highlights the rich variety of materials and methods used when making a print or drawing. Artists have nearly an infinite choice of media and techniques—charcoal vs. graphite, soft pastel vs. oil pastel, etching vs. engraving, drypoint and aquatint, to name a few—all of which can be adapted and manipulated to execute the artist’s vision.

Some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century are featured in Making Your Mark, including Berenice Abbott, Jim Dine, Richard Estes, Walker Evans, Howard Finster, Ke Francis, Jacob Lawrence, Hans Namuth, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Lucas Samaras, Aaron Siskind, and Wayne Thiebaud. Each of the techniques showcased in the exhibition articulates the creative processes and various effects the artist can achieve.

To see more from IA&A's Hechinger's Collection, click here.

Please contact TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org for more information.