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 Max Weber, Cubist Head, 1919-1920. Woodcut. The Nancy Gray Sherrill, Class of 1954, Collection, Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College. |
January 16 - March 6, 2005 UPPER GALLERY American Identities Twentieth-Century Prints from the Nancy Gray Sherrill Collection of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center, Wellesley College Wednesday, January 26, 4:30 pmThe nature of twentieth-century American art is one of multiplicity and transformation over time, though its character may be examined through persistent subject matter revisited by a wide range of artists. The Nancy Gray Sherrill, Class of 1954, Collection presents historic highlights in twentieth-century American art, seen, for example, in the presentation of a diversity of ideas and visions in abstraction, the interpretation of nature, and the social, political, and military issues that have affected the populace. American identity, as identity itself, is built upon an infinite number of elements and viewpoints, origins and histories, and among the multifarious images presented in this exhibition, we may compose a definition suited to the variety of life. Our identities are often tied to places, linked to birthplaces and the personal maps of our lives. The land is an anchor and a home, echoed in our psyches by the lands of ancestry. Urban or pastoral, expansive or condensed, calm or tumultuous, the landscapes in the Sherrill Collection represent diverse interpretations of the natural and constructed world. From traditional, realistic pictorial realms to scenes emblematic of change, from the edges of the coast to the frontiers of the sky, from the lonely city to the windblown shore, the country reveals itself as multi-faceted as the eyes that look upon it. The aura of an unfamiliar place has enticed artists throughout the twentieth century to leave home, trading the known for the unknown and at times braving the difficulties of long journeys. Artists have traveled for a number of reasons, recording, and thus preserving, the places they have visited at a particular moment in time. Their voyages have been inspired by scholarly, spiritual, or personal interests in diverse cultures and their traditional art making methods, or by the opportunity to experience a different way of life. Identity becomes linked with experience, and artists may define themselves in contrast to another culture, while simultaneously identifying with that culture. In the twentieth century, Americans lived through the hardships of the Depression, two world wars fought on foreign soil, and racial turmoil and prejudice at home. Artists expressed their reactions to these life-altering and sometimes life-threatening events in their work. The voice of protest was heard on the subjects of discrimination, poverty, and violence, and the rights of workers and minorities. Tragic and emblematic images likened human suffering to the tortures of Christ and depicted the ugliness, shame, and absurdity of tormentors and dictators. War was personified as one of many grotesque subhuman figures or as skeletal Death. These images exemplify a moral stance that set a standard for the role that the arts can play in times of social discord. By the middle of the twentieth century, the focus of the international art world turned toward New York and the abstract art being created there. American abstraction ranges from the surreal to the minimal, from automatism to abstract expressionism, spanning all media and inspiring innovation from the early twentieth century on. Prominent in the Sherrill Collection are in-depth holdings of artists affiliated with Atelier 17, Stanley William Hayter's printmaking workshop. Here, the confluence of avant-garde European artists exiled during World War II and open-minded American artists led to an innovative sphere of collaboration and experimentation in both imagery and technique, influencing subsequent generations of artists, educators, and master printers. While focusing on landscapes, artist travelers, social consciousness, and abstraction, American Identities: Twentieth-Century Prints from the Nancy Gray Sherrill, Class of 1954, Collection links art and identity in its view of twentieth-century America. |
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