Albright-Knox Art Gallery

#CaughtOnCamera Spotlight on the Collection—Artists in Depth: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Delaunay January 28—June 5, 2011

Spotlight on the Collection—Artists in Depth: Picasso, Braque, Léger, Delaunay, presented by The Buffalo News, was the first in a new series of ongoing exhibitions drawn from the Albright-Knox’s collection focusing on important artists whose works the museum has acquired in depth. The series reached beyond the museum’s well-known masterworks to highlight a broad range of paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from selected artists’ careers. Many of the works are less known to Albright-Knox audiences, not having been exhibited in some time, but, seen together, they brought context and greater understanding to the chosen artists’ practices and their art-historical legacies. With this exhibition, the museum returned to its modernist roots with a complete display of all works in the collection—more than seventy-five objects—by four masters: Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973), Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963), Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), and Sonia Delaunay (French, born Russia, 1885–1979). All were early-twentieth-century pioneers of abstraction—Picasso and Braque joined forces as the founders of Cubism, Delaunay’s bright colors and geometric forms presaged geometric abstraction, and Léger’s cylindrical forms interpreted the mechanical age and predated Pop art.  Picasso: The Artist and His Models, opening November 5, 2016, is the next major exhibition at the Albright-Knox to feature Picasso and his contemporaries. Tickets are on sale now at albrightknox.org/picasso.

Historypin of the Week Isamu Noguchi’s The Cry, 1962 Isamu Noguchi’s The Cry was originally sculpted from balsa wood and was cast in bronze several years later. It was featured in a 1965 exhibition entitled The White House Festival of the Arts on display for only one day, and then brought to The National Gallery in Washington, D.C.

#CaughtOnCamera Opening Concert of the Ninth Season of the Creative Associates, SUNYAB October 28, 1972 On October 28, 1972, the Albright-Knox hosted the opening concert in the ninth season of the Creative Associates group from SUNYAB (State University of New York at Buffalo). The concert program was planned by Lukas Foss and Lejaren Hiller and took place at three locations in the museum: the Auditorium, a corridor in the 1962 Building, and the Sculpture Court in the 1905 Building. The performers and pieces performed are listed below.

Part I, Auditorium: Vintage Alice (1972) by David del Tredici (Buffalo premier) Intermission, Corridor: Tape Piece No. 2 (1972) by Ralph Blauvelt and Egerya (1972) by Peter Gena Part II, Sculpture Court: Pianos and Voices (1972) by Morton Feldman (American premier)

Celebrating her unique spirit and unsparing vision, Who Does She Think She Is? presents Rosalyn Drexler as both a sharp critic of and a joyful participant in American culture of the past fifty years. Born in 1926 to a Russian immigrant family in the Bronx, she grew up during the Depression raised on vaudeville and the movies, with little access to art. Her parents hoped she would make it in Hollywood. Instead, she married painter Sherman Drexler at the age of nineteen and spent the next decade as a mother and housewife seeking outlets for her own creativity, including a brief stint as a female wrestler in the early 1950s and a prolific career as an author, writing experimental novels, award-wining scripts for television, and, under a pseudonym, pulp fiction.

Stealing moments to write during her daughter’s naps and assembling sculpture in her living room, Drexler discovered her own voice as well as New York’s burgeoning art and literary worlds. Her work resonates with the cool Pop art of the 1960s, yet addresses sexual politics with unique frankness. Along with the central themes of love and violence, she explores midcentury masculinity and her often-flamboyant self-identity as a woman, writer, and artist. As Drexler has said of her multifaceted career, “I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about what I should be, or that I should only be one thing.”

#CaughtOnCamera Members’ Preview of Mixed Media and Pop Art November 18, 1963 On November 18, 1963, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery hosted a Members’ Preview for Mixed Media and Pop Art. The exhibition was divided into three sections: mixed media, works by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, and Pop Art. Although part of the Pop movement, Johns and Rauschenberg were already seen as something apart and earlier from the group that was following. An illustrated catalogue was produced to accompany the exhibition. Rosalyn Drexler's Home Movies, 1963, was on view as part of Mixed Media and Pop Art in 1963, and it will again be on display when Rosalyn Drexler: Who Does She Think She Is? opens at the Albright-Knox on October 22, 2016. The work is now in the Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Rosalyn Drexler will give a free public talk with Senior Curator Cathleen Chaffee at 7:15 pm on Friday, October 21, part of the free public opening for the exhibition from 7 to 9 pm.

Historypin of the Week Franz West’s Sculptures at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery Part of Extreme Abstraction, 2005 The top photo is a view of Franz West’s Ypsilon, 2004, on the Albright-Knox’s grounds during Extreme Abstraction in 2005. The bottom photos present a view of the Sculpture Garden, including, from right to left, West’s Meeting Point 3, 2004, Couch, 2004, and Sexuality Symbol, 2000, also installed during Extreme Abstraction.

West’s sculptures deliberately call attention to the varied spectrum of the human form. Not taking himself too seriously, West had fun with shape and color to create engaging outdoor works. The fanciful shape of Meeting Point 3 started out as a kind of sculptural doodle the artist created as a model. The spontaneity of the design remains even when blown up to a monumental scale in aluminum and steel. His art is meant to be engaging, as the artist hopes visitors will interact with the works by using them as a playground, a place to rest, or a photo opportunity.  

Extreme Abstraction, on view July 15 to October 2, 2005, was a major exhibition surveying of the history and future of abstraction that spanned the three buildings of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and extended onto our outdoor campus. Site-specific works and commissioned pieces by contemporary artists were juxtaposed with seminal works from the museum’s collection and recent acquisitions in a visual trajectory of abstraction in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  For more, visit the Albright-Knox Art Gallery’s channel on Historypin.

#CaughtOnCamera Opening of Retrospective Collection of French Art, 1870–1910  October 29, 1916 From October 29 to December 9, 1916, the Albright Art Gallery hosted a loaned exhibition of works from the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, France, titled Retrospective Collection of French Art, 1870–1910. Sarah Bernhardt, a French film and stage actress known as “perhaps the most famous actress of all time,”* was in attendance at the opening celebration on October 29, 1916.  Cornelia B. Sage, Art Director of the Albright Art Gallery, wrote the following in the exhibition catalogue:

“The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Albright Art Gallery, feels especially honored by the French Government, and M. Léonce Bénédite the able Director of the Luxembourg Museum, in the loan of the exhibition which is entrusted to its care. May it be hoped that its visit to Buffalo will not only awaken new interest in French Art but also strengthen the bonds of friendship between the two republics.”

The International Studio, Volume 61 (March–June 1917), describes the opening event on October 29, 1916: “The final exhibition of the year [at the Albright Art Gallery] was a fitting climax. Through the courtesy of the French Government and M. Léonce Bénédite, the Director of the Luxembourg Museum, the collection of works of art from the Luxembourg Museum, which formed part of the French Fine Arts Exhibit at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, was presented in the Albright Art Gallery. The exhibition opened Sunday, the twenty-ninth of October, Madame Sarah Bernhardt graciously being present upon the occasion and adding her words of appreciation and praise in a short address to the assembled audience. The attendance for the opening day, estimated approximately, was 25,000, exceeding the largest previous record by nearly 10,000 persons.”

*http://www.biography.com/people/sarah-bernhardt-9210057

Historypin of the Week John C. Lord House Former Location: Delaware Avenue near Potomac Avenue This wooden house was built by Reverend Dr. John C. Lord (1905–1877) around 1855. He was a well-known pastor of the Central Presbyterian Church in Buffalo for thirty-eight years. The house was torn down in 1894. 

#CaughtOnCamera Gallery Talk in Trends in Painting: 1600–1800 October 1957 From October 2 to November 4, 1957, the Albright Art Gallery hosted Trends in Painting: 1600–1800, a collection of approximately thirty-five paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were loaned by museums, dealers, and private collectors. The exhibition was conceived as a survey of the era during which the foundations were laid for the artworks that made up  the Albright Art Gallery’s collection of works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The October 1957 Members’ Bulletin describes the exhibition as follows: “In the present day and age of high insurance costs, of skyrocketing values on paintings, and of increasingly strict lending policies on the part of museums, ventures into the field of ‘old master’ exhibitions are close to impossible for a museum such as the Albright Art Gallery. In Buffalo, unfortunately, because of the very limited collection of paintings from the years antedating 1800, gallery goers rarely have the opportunity to see paintings of the earlier periods, except on their travels elsewhere.

Although it would obviously be impossible to cover such an enormously rich field as the 17th and 18th centuries in such an exhibition as this, a number of the most important trends in painting are touched upon—the realism of Caravaggio, seen in his own work and in the Le Nain brothers, Georges de La Tour and Ribera; the baroque as represented by Rubens; and classicism by Poussin. Portraiture is briefly surveyed in the work of El Greco, Velazquez, Hals and Rembrandt; and in landscape, Claude Lorrain’s classicism may be contrasted with the romantic approach of Rosa, and the realism of Ruisdael and Hobbema.”

Historypin of the Week Alexander Liberman’s Bond, 1969 Albright-Knox Art Gallery Grounds

Alexander Liberman arrived in the United States in 1941 and quickly became enamored with the industrial landscape. Previously a writer and painter, Liberman learned how to weld steel in the 1950s and thus began his sculpture career. His sculptures became so grandiose that he had to hire assistants and use industrial machinery to help construct his massive works, including Bond. 

The artwork was installed in early 1970 and was featured in two past exhibition—Recent American Painting and Sculpture in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, from November 1 to December 31, 1972, and Extreme Abstraction, from July 15 to October 2, 2005. 

Artwork: Alexander Liberman (American, born Russia, 1912–1999). Bond, 1969. Painted steel, 91 x 101 x 222 inches (231.1 x 256.5 x 563.9 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1969 (K1969:32). © 2016 Alexander Liberman Trust

The series of projects I developed with Mylar was a part of an investigation of materials with certain physical traits that can somehow be activated outside of the material or object itself. Transparency and reflectivity are important because these traits are responsive in the sense that they can amplified or subdued according to the light conditions around them. These traits encourage a type of chameleonic masking effect that occurs with a quantitative accumulation of the material to which they are attached. The Mylar installation evolved by experimenting with how to use the reflective material volumetrically in order not only to create a seductive object but also to attempt to fracture the optical depth of field upon close viewing.

—Tara Donovan, May 2016

See work by Donovan and twenty-six other artists in Defining Sculpture, which offers a perspective on the medium’s remarkable development and hybridity from the postwar years to the present. The exhibition is on view at the Albright-Knox through October 9, 2016.

#CaughtOnCamera Concert in Honor of Robert Rauschenberg September 24, 1977 On September 24, 1977, as part of a special Members’ Preview event, the Albright-Knox hosted a concert in honor of Robert Rauschenberg featuring the music of John Cage and Morton Feldman performed by Feldman and John Tilbury. 

The event was held as part of the opening celebration for the retrospective exhibition Robert Rauschenberg, the most comprehensive exhibition ever shown of the artist’s work, which was on view at the Albright-Knox from September 25 through October 30, 1977. Morton Feldman, who was closely associated with Rauschenberg in New York in the 1950s, was the Music Director for the Center for Creative and Performing Arts at the State University of New York at Buffalo. John Tilbury was a musician known for performing and recording John Cage’s music. 

Historypin of the Week Native American Arts Festival August 8, 1988 On August 8, 1988, the Albright-Knox hosted a Native American Arts Festival titled “Day for the Turtle” featuring dance performances, crafts, and family art activities. 

CLOSING SOON: Shade: Clyfford Still / Mark Bradford

This exhibition features six works Mark Bradford created specifically for this exhibition and which are in dialogue with both Still’s abstractions—more than twenty of which from the Albright-Knox’s collection are included in the exhibition—and the broader legacy of Abstract Expressionism. The museum’s collection also includes a 2007 work by Bradford, Mississippi Gottdam, which is currently on view in conjunction with the exhibition.

Although Bradford creates abstract works, he is always informed by the social and political environment. The title of this work is inspired by Nina Simone’s 1964 song “Mississippi Goddam,” a plaintive cry for urgent social change and racial equality. In this work, the title also references the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005. Using debris he collected from New Orleans’s streets, Bradford created an abstract image that also serves as a critique of the slowness of recovery efforts in low-income communities after Katrina. He then laid a sheet of silver leaf over the initial layer of found paper and used a sander to recover portions of the submerged colors and text. The resulting image appears at once like a dilapidated wall and a seascape, with the undulating cuts recalling oncoming waves and the colorful paper fragments evoking flotsam and jetsam after the deluge.

Visit soon, because this exhibition will close on October 2, 2016. Shade is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue, which includes an essay by Albright-Knox Senior Curator Cathleen Chaffee and an interview with Bradford on Still by Michael Auping, Chief Curator at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. Available now through Shop AK

#CaughtOnCamera Fall 1979 Adult Workshop In the fall of 1979, the Albright-Knox offered a series of adult art classes focused on teaching participants to create still life paintings with watercolors. The classes, which were organized by the museum’s Education Department, were part of a larger series of art classes designed to engage the public with the museum and teach artmaking practices. In 2016, the museum is carrying on this tradition of art education by offering a series of adult art classes around the exhibition Defining Sculpture. Participants will tour the exhibition, then practice drawing with an instructor in the museum’s classrooms. The registration cost includes both all necessary supplies and museum admission for the day of the class. The first class will be held on October 1 from 1 to 4 pm.