Diana Thater: Butterflies and Other People

October 24, 2009 - February 14, 2010

This exhibition by internationally recognized film and video pioneer, Diana Thater, features two recent video installations that render the gallery space as landscape, utilizing the existing architecture of two Museum galleries to create color- and light-saturated environments and projections.

Diana Thater describes her work as Neo-Structuralist Installation, a reference to Structural Film of the 1960s that has informed her own work and, along with performance art, is one of the major foundations of video art. Through a variety of techniques, including “the erased video rectangle, upturned monitors, and oddly placed equipment, all as choreography,” states the artist, “I create sculpture with images of nature in space.” The natural world has been a recurring motif in Thater’s work since the early 1990s, bringing the outdoors into the gallery, and addressing the relationship between modern technology and notions of beauty and the sublime. Through devices such as interrupting and dissolving the surrounding architecture with projections, and filtering natural and existing light sources through colored gels, the viewer is surrounded by the work, thus becoming part of it. [excerpts from Re-title.com fall 2008]

The first work in the exhibition, Untitled Videowall (Butterflies) (2008), arises from the Monarch Butterfly Project of 2006-2008—Thater’s response to an invitation by three curators in Mexico City to make an artwork drawing attention to the threats to the butterfly’s winter home in Michoacán, Mexico. This multi-monitor piece shows footage of the migratory resting place on six flat-screen monitors that rest on the floor. The placement of the monitors reflect the position of the butterflies upon Thater's arrival—thriving on the forest floor due in part to the increasing lack of forest foliage (where they normally take refuge). The presentation at SBMA represents the museum debut of this work and coincides with the peak season of the Coronado Butterfly Preserve in Goleta.

Perfect Devotion Two (2005) is the second work in the exhibition, featuring rescued tigers from the Shambala Preserve, a big-cat-rescue in Southern California founded and run by actress Tippi Hedren. The subjects of Perfect Devotion Two are Simba, Mona, and Zoë, who were discovered together as cubs, and, like most of the cats that live at the ranch, were rescued from the black market trade of exotic animals (others are rescued from zoos). Thater filmed them over the course of a single day, from sunrise to sunset, on ten rolls of 35mm film, each roll becoming a source for each work of the series.

Subject matter, technique, and presentation are all highly integral elements of the work of Diana Thater who states that she is devoted to working with “nature as an abstraction, as culture’s other.” The examination of, and play with different species allows Thater to present other ideas of knowledge, especially knowledge achieved through patient and quiet observation. Ideas related to the way nature is mediated, through human intervention and technology, for instance, are highlighted by the editing process inherent in each work. Untitled Videowall (Butterflies) is edited in space, or, broken up in the gallery on six monitors arranged in a set composition. Perfect Devotion Two has been edited in a more conventional manner between 35 mm film, with the camera positioned on a crane, and hand-held super-8 film.

Thater was born in San Francisco, received her BA in Art History at NYU and her MFA at Art Center College of Design, and lives and works in Los Angeles. Thater has been the subject of numerous catalogs and books. Her work is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Walker Art Center, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna, Kunsthalle Bremen in Germany; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and many others. Recent exhibitions include Diana Thater: gorillagorillagorilla, at the Kunsthaus Graz in Austria (a collaborative project with the Natural History Museum, London, England).

 

Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, China (3rd Century BCE to 1st Century CE)

September 19  - December 13, 2009

More than 2,000 years ago, a Chinese marquis and his family began their plans for the afterlife with three lavish tombs in Hunan Province which were excavated in the 1970s. For the first time in the U.S., their extraordinary existence will come to life in this exhibition. Nearly 70 treasures including lacquer ware, wood carvings, jade ornaments, bronze sculptures, seals, and silk costumes and textiles from the Hunan Provincial Museum will be on view at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, after an exhibition at the China Institute in New York City. 

The excavation at Mawangdui in southeastern China is considered one of the major archaeological discoveries of the 20th century. Containing the remains and possessions of the Marquis of Dai and his wife and son, the tombs were found between 1972 and 1974 in the archaeological site of Mawangdui, which is located in a suburb of the modern city of Changsha, Hunan Province. More than 3,000 objects from the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE to 25 CE) were found in extraordinary condition representing the highest levels of workmanship. The tomb that housed the wares most represented in the exhibition, also held the remarkably well-preserved body of the noblewoman of the family, known affectionately as “Lady Dai”. “People during the Han dynasty regarded death as birth and longed for immortality,” notes Willow Hai Chang, Director, China Institute Gallery. “To prepare for the afterlife, they constructed their tombs to be eternal residences. As a result of this landmark excavation, we now have a rare window into the fascinating Han civilization through these remarkable objects of the highest artistry.” 

The extraordinary significance of this assemblage is not only apparent in the variety and quality of objects, but also the time period and place from whence these artifacts originated. The Changsha Kingdom was heir to the Chu culture in southeastern China. It played a significant role in the cultural formation of the Han dynasty (202 BCE–220 CE), a defining period in Chinese history that shaped the artistic, intellectual, political, religious, and social foundations of Chinese civilization. The objects preserved in the Mawangdui tombs give a visual dimension to early Han dynasty beliefs, design, and technology, while the body of material culture challenges us to re-evaluate our current understanding of early China.

Works in the exhibition showcase those items that were felt to have great meaning to the owner, thereby deeming them necessary in life after death. Many of the objects preserved delicate or perishable materials, such as food, drink, and cosmetics, mostly fashioned with wood, silk, and paper. Some specific highlights include a two-tiered cosmetic box containing nine small boxes, thought to have belonged to Lady Dai. The outer surface of the box is coated with black lacquer and then affixed with patterned gold foil, and the interior coated with vermilion lacquer. The nine small boxes in the lower tier contained items that could have been found on many women’s dressing tables at the time: cosmetics, rouge, silk powder pads, combs and a needle case.

Of course, what would a journey be to the afterlife without the joy of music! Five charming wooden figurines of musicians which seem to form a small family band are included in the exhibition (see image at top), indicating the importance of song and dance to the tomb occupant. The figures are painted in black and vermilion to depict their faces and colorful gowns.

The tombs at Mawangdui also contained a stunning amount of information in the form of books and tablets on health, well-being, and longevity. These findings are particularly intriguing as they represent some of the earliest examples of a cohesive writing style including the Chinese characters that are utilized today. One inscribed tablet refers to dried soybean seeds that have germinated and were used in the treatment of headache, paralysis, asthma and other health problems. Another book, entitled Prescriptions for Maintaining Health, was written on silk and contains 32 different medical prescriptions.

The exhibition also features one remarkably preserved silk robe and textile fragments two of which are the world’s earliest known examples of printed and painted design on gauze weave. From these superb examples, silk was widely used among nobilities in early Han dynasty. The technology of silk production and textile making reached an unprecedented height that is rarely surpassed today. “ Hunan embroidery” remains one of the four celebrated styles of embroidery in China.

Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom, Third Century BCE to First Century CE is organized by the China Institute Gallery in collaboration with the Hunan Provincial Museum, and is curated by Chen Jianming, Director of the Hunan Provincial Museum, who also edited the catalogue. A fully illustrated, bilingual catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

California Calling: Works from Santa Barbara Collections, 1948 - 2008

Part I: July 18, 2009 - March 7, 2010
Part II:  September 12 - December 20, 2009

Eclectic, inventive, anti-conformist…these are just a few of the widespread characterizations of artists who have lived and worked in the richest, most diverse, and most populous region of the United States since the end of World War II.  This  two-part exhibition highlights works from a selection of artists and movements in California from the past sixty years—a period that generated some of the most innovative and critically recognized art in the world.

Drawn primarily from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s permanent collection and local private collections, this exhibition highlights works from various artists and movements throughout California’s diverse Post-World War II history.  The inspiration for this exhibition rises from the rich and vital history of art made along the West Coast after 1945 and the equally important role that SBMA has played in this history.  For example, many of the works featured are by artists who showed at the Museum at early points in their careers.  Featuring both celebrated and under-recognized artists, it also intends to reveal the sense of individualism and insight inspired by this expansive terrain.

The time period that this exhibition regards is significant.  Circa 1948 art went through a major transformation in California and across the globe.  Surrealist tendencies morphed into or were discarded in favor of entirely new forms of art-making, especially Abstract Expressionism, and, from there, expressive types of figurative painting (especially prominent in the San Francisco Bay Area), regional forms of Pop Art, and onto work inspired by Minimalism, Conceptual Art, New Materials, and beyond.  Works representing these genres and others are present throughout the exhibition.

Artists featured include those who have reputations that range from local notoriety to international fame.  Santa Barbara-based artists in the exhibition include Phil Argent, Gary Brown, Dan Connally and Joan Tanner, as well as local legends such as William Dole and others.  Internationally recognized figures are also represented, including Sam Francis, John McLaughlin, David Park, Ed Ruscha, Betye Saar, James Turrell, and many more.

Part II:  September 12 – December 20, 2009
(Davidson and Colefax Galleries)
Edgar Arceneaux
Phil Argent
Gary Brown
Chris Burden
Ingrid Calame
Karen Carson
Dan Connally
Liz Craft
Russell Crotty
Paul Dillon
Terry Fox
Jack Goldstein
David Hammons
Tom Knechtel
Peter Krasnow
Charles Long               
Dan McCleary
John McCracken
Aaron Morse
Lee Mullican
Patrick Nickell
Lari Pittman
Ken Price
Roland Reiss
Ed Ruscha
Paul Sarkisian
Alexis Smith
Brad Spence
Fred Tomaselli
Joyce Treiman
Tom Wudl

Corot in California

July 4 - October 11, 2009

Corot was the most profound, absorbing, and respected landscape painter in France in the generation before Impressionism.  He was much beloved by his peers and collectors alike, and remains an important figure whose exploration of the light and poetry of the French and Italian landscape still resonates today. 

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to present more than a dozen paintings, plus several prints and drawings, representing the first exhibition devoted to the art of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875) in California, and the first in the United States since the major survey in 1996.  Drawing from private and public collections, including the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and SBMA’s own permanent collection, the presentation examines Corot’s development as an artist, from his first views of Rome to his late, delicately-painted landscapes, both real and ideal. 

Before developing into the leading painter of the Barbizon school of France in the mid-19^th century, Corot originated from a moderately well-off family whose house in Anvers, about 20 miles southwest of Paris, remained his home for his entire career.  Apprenticed to a fabric designer, Corot finally gained the courage to become a painter only at the age of 26, as he was shy and socially awkward all his life.

His first experience of Italy, from 1826 to 1828, was a critical moment for him when he captured the strong, warm light and golden ruins with a fresh and vivid directness.  Corot's sketches in Italy have been among his most highly prized works for the last century.  The exhibition is fortunate to include four Italian sketches as well as two other early sketches.

As he matured, Corot developed a soft, silvery light and touch that cast even his views of real places in the poetic light of memory.  Corot stated:

“What there is to see in painting, or rather what I am looking for, is the form, the whole, the value of the tones…That is why for me the color comes after, because I love more than anything else the overall effect, the harmony of the tones, while color gives you a kind of shock that I don’t like.”

These pictures, which married the classical landscape conventions of such earlier French masters as Claude Lorrain to the specifics of northern French light and scenery, were the basis of Corot’s reputation in his own day, and avidly collected by Americans, then and to this day.

Such a strong demand for his work developed that a significant amount of forgeries were produced sixty years after Corot’s death.  The famous quip by the Louvre curator René Huyghe is a humorous punctuation, “Corot painted three thousand canvases, ten thousand of which have been sold in America.”  The artist’s relatively easy-to-imitate style and lax attitude towards his students to copy his works; touching up and signing student and collector copies; and lending works to professional copiers and rental agencies contributed to the problem. 

Despite the flurry of problem pictures that abound, the SBMA exhibition allows the visitor to see Corot at his best by showing only those works that are both unquestionably genuine and of the highest quality.

Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow

May 2 – August 16, 2009

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art is pleased to present the largest retrospective of Brett Weston's work in over 30 years.  The exhibition surveys Weston’s nearly 70-year career presenting more than 130 photographs that range from early vintage prints made in Mexico and California in the 1920s and 1930s; East Coast images from the 1940s; to later landscape and nature photographs as well as prints made shortly before his death in Hawaii in 1993.

While the presentation provides an unprecedented view of the form, composition and contrast that remained constants in Weston’s career, it also parallels the life of the artist, especially the familial and artistic relationship between Brett and his father, Edward.  The exhibition illuminates their influence on each other, simultaneously freeing Brett from his father’s shadow and allowing him to take his own place in the pantheon of American photography.

Brett Weston seemed destined from birth to become a fine photographer.  Born in Los Angeles in 1911, the second son of photographer Edward Weston, he had perhaps the closest artistic relationship with his famous father of the four Weston sons.  In 1925, Edward took Brett to Mexico where the thirteen year old became his father's apprentice.   Brett’s formal education was limited, and after attending school in Mexico for two weeks, he quit.  It was then that he took to photography full-time and never considered doing anything else, working exclusively in black and white throughout his life.

Brett took his subjects from the natural world – especially dunes, rocks, and tide pools of the California coast, close-ups of bark and kelp, and water in its many forms.   Never manipulated with additional lighting or props, his photographs are distinctly abstract but tied to the real world.

In 1926, father and son returned to California, where Brett was first to photograph the sand dunes at Oceano and the rocks and pools at Point Lobos, subjects that became favorites of Edward.  In 1929, Brett exhibited 20 photographs alongside prints by Edward Steichen, Berenice Abbott, Man Ray, Imogen Cunningham, his father, and others, in the Film und Foto exhibition in Stuttgart. Edward wrote: “[Brett] is now one of the finest photographers in this country—which means the world.”

In 1952, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art organized an exhibition of Brett Weston’s sculpture and photography, but Brett himself had interrupted his career to print, under his father’s direction, a 50^th anniversary portfolio of 12 Edward Weston prints in an edition of 100.  Each of the 12,000 prints were produced in a darkroom, with his brother Cole, his second wife, Dody, and another photographer Morley Baer and his wife helping.  It consumed most of the year.

By the mid 1950s, Edward was becoming increasingly ill with Parkinson’s Disease.  There are accounts that he was selling his prints for $25 apiece to buy needed medicine.  Brett, again, undertook a heroic print project to raise the needed funds for his father by producing eight copies of “project prints” taken during the late 1930s consisting of 800 photographs each.  Edward died on New Year’s Day in 1958.

With the obligations to his father complete, Brett began to travel extensively, including an 8 month, 30,000 mile trip in Europe, Pacific Northwest, Baja, Japan, and countless other regions, producing rich portfolios of work.  By 1980, Brett had had more than 100 solo exhibitions and he was financially doing well, after having struggled for decades.

Evidence of the immense gratitude and respect that he had for both his father and the art of photography, came in 1991, when, at the age of 80, he burned some of his own negatives - catching the attention of the media, including the New York Times.  Brett never printed his father’s negatives after Edward Weston died, and by destroying his own negatives, sent the message that no one can print or interpret another artist’s work. 

Brett Weston: Out of the Shadow has been co-organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Oklahoma City, O.K.

This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of Eric A. Skipsey, SBMA Museum Collectors Council, SBMA PhotoFutures, Alice Gillaroo and Susan Jorgensen, Susan Bower, Susan Bowey, Amy and Michael Mayfield, Stephanie and Fred Shuman, and Patricia and Richard Blake.

Yinka Shonibare, MBE: A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child and Other Astonishing Works

March 14 - June 21, 2009 

Born in Britain to Nigerian parents, Yinka Shonibare, MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) is recognized internationally for his provocative sculptural installations, photographs and films that contrast African and European imagery and convention.  This exhibition represents the artist’s first solo exhibition in the western United States.  Yinka Shonibare, MBE: A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child and Other Astonishing Works features an idyllic family riding human-powered flying machines modeled after 19^th century drawings, alluding to the continual freedom sought by emigrants and tourists alike.  Also included is a selection of works from prominent West Coast collections, as well as several recent works that speak to cultural myths and misinterpretations of colonialism.  The exhibition also marks the inaugural organizational effort for SBMA by Julie Joyce, the Museum’s new Curator of Contemporary Art.

Best known is the artist’s sculptural work, which presents headless mannequins clothed in Victorian era dress made from atypical fabrics—brightly colored, wax-printed cloths commonly identified as African batiks.  Essential to the work’s meaning is the use of textiles strongly associated with Africa yet originally produced in Europe and sold to Africans by Dutch traders in the 19^th century.

In an interview with Jan Garden Castro for Sculpture Magazine in 2006, Shonibare commented on his intentional, neatly headless creations, “…a lot of my work challenges the idea of hierarchy or aristocracy in some way.  During the French Revolution, the heads of the aristocrats were chopped off using the guillotine.  Basically it started as a joke, because I take working class fabrics from Africa and dress the aristocracy in those fabrics and then I take their heads off, but there’s no blood or violence.  It’s witty in a knowing sort of way.”

The exhibition continues to underscore ideas of colonialism and subjugation with Shonibare’s model of the famous, ill-fated French frigate Méduse ( Medusa, in English), outfitted with Dutch batik sails and menaced by an artificial wave.  An enormous C-print photograph of the miniature ship and tempest hangs on the wall next to the vitrine.

The incident of the Méduse was recaptured several years later in French painter, Théodore Géricault's notorious, iconic masterpiece, Le Radeau de la Méduse (The Raft of the Medusa), 1818-19.  Like much of Shonibare's works, Le Méduse plays off of grand artistic traditions in many compelling ways.

The exhibition is punctuated by the presentation of Shonibare’s first film in which the artist continues his quest to question power in relation to race, gender, and history. Un Ballo in Maschera (a Masked Ball) 2004 presents the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden in 1792 through the medium of dance.  The characters don Shonibare’s trademark African batiks but remain ambiguous in identity and sometimes gender.  The artist’s comments on his film in Artforum in 2005 also denote the golden thread running through the theme of the entire exhibition.  “My aim with this film has been….to push the boundaries by finding new ways to interrupt the narrative moment in cinema and by reconsidering costumes and its possibilities.  The costumes embody a paradox: They are made from fabric influenced by Indonesian design, produced by the Dutch, who tried it on the West African market, where it was appropriated as African.  The point for me is that identity itself is an artificial construct.”

Shonibare was born in London in 1962, and he has had numerous exhibitions, awards, and residencies during the past 12 years.  Most recently, his work has been featured at the Miami Art Museum, The National Gallery, London, the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Royal Opera House and Africa Centre in London. 

The exhibition was organized for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art by Julie Joyce, Curator of Contemporary Art.  The installation, A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child, was commissioned by the Miami Art Museum, where it was exhibited in fall 2008.  Other works are on loan from prominent West Coast collections, including the Seattle Art Museum; Peter Norton and Eileen Harris Norton, Santa Monica; and James Cohan Gallery, New York. 

This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the SBMA Women's Board, The Cheeryble Foundation, Alice Willfong, Anne and Houston Harte, and Elisabeth and Gregory Fowler.

RE:NEW  Building the Contemporary Collection

March 7 - June 21, 2009

 Since its founding in 1941, the permanent collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has reflected a distinct diversity as well as a consistently trained spotlight on contemporary art.  The focus of the contemporary art collection in the 1940s comprised works by American regionalists and young California artists, in the 1950s European-influenced modernists, and in the 1960s-70s photography.  RE:NEW, featuring works by Amy Adler, Edgar Arceneaux, Jack Goldstein, Robert Heinecken, and Candida Höfer, reveals recent acquisitions of contemporary art and photography being exhibited for the first time, and signifies our continued yet renewed interest in building the contemporary art collection.