Object Label Copy Gallery L3 Pop Art - Nelson...

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Object Label Copy Galleries L3 & L4 February, 2012 p. 1 Object Label Copy Gallery L3 Pop Art Marilyn Levine Canadian, 19332005 Sand Backpack, 1974 Stoneware Take another look. This object is not what it seems. Marilyn Levine has sculpted, in stoneware clay, a hyper-realistic semblance of a worn leather backpack. Resting on a pedestal in the gallery, it is easily mistaken for the real thing. Levine is best known for her convincing sculptures of shoes, battered luggage, gloves, handbags, golf bags and leather jackets hung from hooks. Sand Backpack and works like it date from the 1970s and are characterized as California Funk. But Levine’s intent was serious. She understood that these old things were metaphors for life, for elapsed time and for all that had happened along the way. In this metaphoric sense, her sculptures are evidence of a person’s existence. Gift of the Friends of Art, F75-11 Tom Wesselmann American, b. 1931 Still Life No. 24, 1962 Acrylic polymer on board, fabric curtain Pop artist Tom Wesselmann's Still Life No. 24 affirms the American dream and the prosperity of the 1960s middle class. The variety, size and quantity of the fresh, canned and packaged convenience foods give evidence of agricultural abundance, factory productivity, and a thriving consumer economy. Television, with its myriad product advertisements, became a central force of cultural change. Still Life No. 24 is an assemblage composed of two-dimensional imagery and three-dimensional objects. Wesselmann cut images of foodstuffs and kitchen items from subway posters and other large advertisements. The plastic ear of corn is an advertising prop, acquired by the artist from a vendor on Coney Island who sold corn on the cob. The blue curtain is of the type pictured in magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal, which promoted interior design to the middle class. Through the window, a sailboat glides along, further suggesting the good life of the American dream. Gift of the Guild of the Friends of Art F66-54

Transcript of Object Label Copy Gallery L3 Pop Art - Nelson...

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Object Label Copy Gallery L3 – Pop Art

Marilyn Levine Canadian, 1933–2005 Sand Backpack, 1974 Stoneware Take another look. This object is not what it seems. Marilyn Levine has sculpted, in stoneware clay, a hyper-realistic semblance of a worn leather backpack. Resting on a pedestal in the gallery, it is easily

mistaken for the real thing. Levine is best known for her convincing sculptures of shoes, battered luggage, gloves, handbags, golf bags and leather jackets hung from hooks. Sand Backpack and works like it date from the 1970s and are characterized as California Funk. But Levine’s intent was serious. She understood that these old things were metaphors for life, for elapsed time and for all that had happened along the way. In this metaphoric sense, her sculptures are evidence of a person’s existence. Gift of the Friends of Art, F75-11

Tom Wesselmann American, b. 1931 Still Life No. 24, 1962 Acrylic polymer on board, fabric curtain

Pop artist Tom Wesselmann's Still Life No. 24 affirms the American dream and the prosperity of the 1960s middle class. The variety, size and quantity of the fresh, canned and packaged convenience foods

give evidence of agricultural abundance, factory productivity, and a thriving consumer economy. Television, with its myriad product advertisements, became a central force of cultural change.

Still Life No. 24 is an assemblage composed of two-dimensional imagery and three-dimensional objects. Wesselmann cut images of foodstuffs and kitchen items from subway posters and other large advertisements. The plastic ear of corn is an advertising prop, acquired by the artist from a vendor on Coney Island who sold corn on the cob.

The blue curtain is of the type pictured in magazines such as Ladies' Home Journal, which promoted interior design to the middle class. Through the window, a sailboat glides along, further suggesting the good life of the American dream.

Gift of the Guild of the Friends of Art F66-54

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Wayne Thiebaud American, b. 1920 Jawbreaker Machine, 1963 Oil on canvas Wayne Thiebaud’s Jawbreaker Machine is a frontal, iconic image. His distinctive still life paintings of pinball machines, toys and foodstuffs such as pies, cakes, sundaes and sandwiches, are inspired by childhood memories spent on the boardwalk in Long Beach,

California. In Jawbreaker Machine the subject rests upon a stark white ground, inviting us to concentrate on the sumptuous handling of paint and the object’s simplified form and intensified color. Here, even the shadows are colored and the contours of the candies are outlined in contrasting colors. Thiebaud charges this otherwise ordinary subject with dynamic visual energy. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jack Glenn through the Friends of Art, F65-46

Robert Rauschenberg American, 1925-2008 Tracer, 1963 Oil and silkscreen on canvas Tracer is one of the 79 silkscreened paintings Robert Rauschenberg produced between 1963 and 1964, whose imagery is derived from everyday information- photographs, newspapers and magazines. Tracer alludes to the Vietnam War by incorporating American symbols of war and patriotism-army helicopters and a bald eagle. It also juxtaposes an urban street scene and a reproduction of Peter Paul Rubens’ Venus at Her Toilet (ca. 1613-15),

a classic image of beauty and love. Rauschenberg presents modern culture bombarded by conflicting images, signs and information. Rauschenberg is considered a pivotal figure in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. He unites the disparate imagery of Pop with the bold brushwork of Abstract Expressionism. Purchase: Nelson Gallery Foundation, F84-70

John Chamberlain American, 1927 - 2011 Huzzy, 1961 Steel, paint, and chromium plating with fabric John Chamberlain was one of the first artists to successfully translate the sensibilities of American Abstract Expressionist painting into sculpture. In an almost painterly fashion, Chamberlain bends, crushes, arranges and then welds together discarded parts from wrecked automobiles, transforming the rawness

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of found materials into compositions of fluidity and grace. In Huzzy, Chamberlain creates a gestural energy through curved planes, intersecting angles and the incorporation of color. He adds variation in texture and subtle commentary through the incorporation of real female undergarments. The use of clothing and automobile parts links Chamberlain’s art to popular culture. Gift of Mrs. Charles F. Buckwalter in memory of Charles F. Buckwalter, F64-8

Andy Warhol American, 1928-1987 Baseball, 1962 Silkscreen and oil on canvas Andy Warhol is a paragon of American Pop Art of the 1960s. Like other artists associated with Pop, he borrowed images from popular culture in defiance of traditional sources for fine art. Cultural icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s soup cans are featured in Warhol’s silkscreen paintings. By using silkscreen, a technique used in mass production,

Warhol further denied the notion of art as a unique object bearing the mark of an individual, artistic personality. Baseball was the first photo-silkscreened painting by Warhol. It celebrates the American institution of baseball and incorporates a news photograph of New York Yankee Roger Maris. Maris became famous in 1961 after he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record. Gift of the Guild of the Friends of Art, and other friends of the Museum, F63-16

Richard Estes American, born 1932 Bus Window, 1968–1973 Oil on masonite Richard Estes crops the image of an ordinary city bus to focus our attention on the windshield and its reflections. Distorted by the window’s curve, mirrored images of buildings and street signs are rendered meticulously. The glass reveals little of the bus’ interior. Instead, it reflects the viewer’s surroundings. Estes, a photorealist artist, fuses information from multiple photographs to construct images that draw us in, like visual

puzzles. Bequest of Estelle S. Ellis, 2005.10.4

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David Hockney English, b. 1937 Invented Man Revealing Still Life, 1975 Oil on canvas

Invented Man Revealing Still Life expresses the playful dualities-abstraction and realism, flatness and depth, that characterize much of David Hockney's art. His imaginary man, composed of the abstract forms of a blocky torso and stick-like legs, raises a curtain to reveal a relatively realistic vase of flowers. Hockney overturns the laws of perspective by

placing the two-dimensional, flat figure in front of a three-dimensional table that seems to recede toward an imaginary vanishing point. On closer inspection, the back horizontal edge of the table is wider than the front, contradicting the spatial illusion. In Invented Man Revealing Still Life, Hockney's playful manipulation of space and form confirm his commitment to the idea that art should be pleasurable and accessible to everyone.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William L. Evans Jr., 78-35

Tom Burckhardt American, b. 1964 Double Team Enamel paint on panel Tom Burckhardt's Double Team represents his signature style-an abstract composition of energetic patterns and bright colors interwoven with passages of realism. In the lower register of Double Team, the large square of warm beige doubles as an abstract element and construction material. Burckhardt manipulates scale and spatial relationships, representing diminutive workmen with caps and tool belts, who labor to construct the composition of the work of art in which they are

depicted. The postmodern Double Team borrows freely from earlier styles-zigzagging lines and stripes from Pattern & Decoration and Op Art, squares of color from Hans Hofmann and the vertical format of Chinese landscape painting. The red calligraphic line recalls Abstract Expressionism except that here the stylized gesture is a carefully planned, formulaic drip. Purchase: Acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, 2006.1

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Edward Ruscha American, b. 1937 Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive, 1969 Oil on canvas In Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive, Edward Ruscha explores an obscure language of visual relationships. He divorces the objects depicted from their everyday contexts by placing them within an infinite, surreal space. The relationships that exist among the marbles, apple and olive are equally mysterious, and we are left with any number

of interpretations. The marbles might refer to childhood, the olive to hors d’oeuvres and martinis and the apple to the Fall of Adam and Eve. Such a reading makes this a meditation on the loss of innocence. Alternately, Ruscha may have constructed a playful dialog among round forms or a treatise on Newton’s law. Gift of Norman and Elaine Polsky, Fixtures Furniture, Kansas City, F86-50/3

Wayne Thiebaud American, b. 1920 Bikini, 1964 Oil on canvas Wayne Thiebaud, who is best known for his still-life paintings ( Jawbreaker Machine, this gallery), turned to figural studies in 1963 and 1964. In Bikini, a fusion of realist and Pop Art interests, Thiebaud treats the human body as an inanimate, static object—literally a still life. Here, there is no psychological insight into the personality of his subject. The figure’s pose reveals a minimum of action and emotion and, though clad in a bikini, she communicates no erotic overtones. The absence of props or a setting

for the figure further eliminates the suggestion of a narrative. Thiebaud outlines the figure in green, red and blue to add visual energy to the form, yet isolates it against a neutral, white background. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Louis Sosland, F66-35

Ingmar Relling, designer Norwegian, 1920–2002 Westnofa, manufacturer Norway, active 1950s–60s Siesta Chair and Ottoman, ca. 1965 Beech with leather and canvas

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Robert Sonneman, designer American, born 1942 Robert Sonneman Associates, Inc., manufacturer Suspended Arch Arm Orbiter Floor Lamp, ca. 1967 Chromium Simple, accessible and ergonomic forms were the height of sophistication and comfort for many Europeans and Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. The elegant, bent laminated wooden frame of the Siesta Chair cradles a leather cushion allowing the user to be supported and relaxed. The Orbiter Floor Lamp allows the user to adjust the thin, highly functional arm to any position. Both

the furniture and lamp are still in production today, a testament to their enduring place as exemplars of modern design. Gifts of Margaret Jeter Doan, 2011.60.1-3

Sigmar Polke German, 1941-2010 Untitled, ca.1979-1983 Acrylic and spray enamel on two attached sheets of paper

In Untitled, Sigmar Polke juxtaposes expressive brushstrokes with stenciled images borrowed from sources such as advertisements, comic books and magazines. On the left, a puzzled man looks toward an agitated woman, who turns away

and covers her ears with her hands. Opposite, a man holds an unidentified package. The mood is tense. What is happening? Is this a broken engagement, a revelation of marital infidelity or something else entirely?

Polke implies a narrative and then confounds it. Meaning is ambiguous. In Untitled, the contrived emotions, expressed through the woman's gesture and the confused on-looker, are the same as those disseminated in popular culture. Untitled represents the sense of emotional distance in a society emptied of communication and compassion. Polke is a detached skeptic.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, 2003.8

Roy Lichtenstein American, 1923-1997 Still Life with Brushes, Shell and Star Fish, 1972 Oil and magna acrylic on canvas

Roy Lichtenstein was one of the leading painters of the Pop Art movement. During the 1960s he translated banal advertisements and

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adventure comic strips into large-scale paintings, using bright, flat colors and hard-edge, precise drawing. Benday dots, integral to the photo-mechanical printing process, are exaggerated to the point of becoming design elements in the art.

Still Life with Brushes, Shell and Star Fish belongs to a series of paintings by Lichtenstein that investigates the styles and subjects of art history. In this painting, Lichtenstein defies our expectations for the still life by rendering it in the visual language of the comic strip. He reminds us that the process of mechanical reproduction reduces all works of art to simple arrangements of dots.

Gift of the Friends of Art, F73-15

Robert Cottingham American, b. 1935 Art, 1992 Color lithograph

Robert Cottingham combines abstraction and illusionism to create images drawn from popular culture. In this lithograph, Cottingham draws our attention to the single word "art" by removing it from its association with other words in the title on the neon theater marquee. Is he hinting that art is a thing of the past, something once grand but

now just a nostalgic afterglow? Or is he more interested in the combined abstract effect of the forms, colors, curved lines and angles in the image?

Gift in memory of Dr. John W. Hardy by the Print Society, Miss Elaine Blaylock, Mr. John L. Coakley Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Curtis B. Cutting, Mr. and Mrs. John R. Dixon, Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Everitt, Dr. Jeanne E. Fish, Dr. and Mrs. Leo R. Goertz, Mr. and Mrs. Michael Gross, Mr. Edward R. Levy, Mr. and Mrs. George L. McKenna, Miss Sharon Seymour, Mrs. Lois Spears, and Mrs. Paula Thoburn. F93-2

George Segal American, 1924-2000 Chance Meeting, 1989 Plaster, aluminum, and galvanized steel Chance Meeting represents one of George Segal’s favorite motifs: people on city streets. A one way street sign identifies an urban environment, while three figures face each other in close proximity. This pose, along with the title, implies that they are friends or acquaintances who have unexpectedly met on the street. Segal often used family and friends as models. In Chance Meeting, the woman wearing high heels is the artist’s daughter, Rena Segal. This plaster sculpture contains details captured by the casting process, including folds in the clothing and even top-stitching on seams.

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Gift of Carroll Janis and Donna Seldin Janis in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008.59.A-G

Gallery L4 – Minimalism

Frank Stella American, born 1936 Moultonville III, 1965–1966 Enamel on canvas Frank Stella has stated that a picture is “a flat surface with paint on it—nothing more.” His rejection of pictorial imagery and expressive gestures is reflected in the flatness of the paint and the toned down colors of Moultonville III. He broke rectangles into sections and reassembled them into irregular geometric shapes. The title of the painting, Moultonville, is simply a title—it is not connected to the painting’s content or meaning.

Gift of the Friends of Art, F67-13

Donald Judd American, 1928-1994 Large Stack, 1968 Stainless steel and amber Plexiglas Donald Judd is internationally recognized as one of the most important innovators of minimal art. Minimalist sculpture is characterized by its reduced number and variety of forms and by its elimination of expressive, artistic emotion. Large Stack is made up of units whose rational, geometric simplicity and systematic spatial relationships make them indistinguishable from each other. Judd uses industrial materials, in this case prefabricated stainless steel and Plexiglas sheets, as a conscious rejection of craftsmanship. There are 32 versions of Judd’s stacks,

representing his deliberate attempt to demystify the work of art as a unique, precious object. Gift of the Friends of Art F76-41

Jennifer Bartlett American, b.1941 Fifteen Plate Piece, 1973 15 units, enamel and silkscreen inks on steel

Jennifer Bartlett's Fifteen Plate Piece is an example of her early interest in Minimalist and Conceptual art practice. Bartlett used one-foot-square steel plates and Testors quick-drying and easy-to-apply hobby store paint. Rather

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than mixing colors, she used color directly, limiting her palette to red, yellow and blue, as well as green, black and white.

Bartlett's approach to Fifteen Plate Piece was methodical. She began with steel plates commercially coated with baked-on white enamel and overprinted with a silkscreened grid of lines. Within the grid, she painted tiny dots to create horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines, which created intersections. Using the grid of lines as her guide, Bartlett laboriously applied the enamel within the small squares as she explored the rationality of structural systems.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, 2005.25.A-O

Clytie Alexander American, born 1940 Diaphan 15, Orange Yellow/Orange, 2006 Acrylic on aluminum Hear the drumbeats of Indian classical music. Imagine the patterned walls of Muslim architecture. Feel the heat of California’s Mojave Desert and the coolness of engineered systems. These are the artist’s experiences that influenced this work. Painted on a rectangular aluminum panel perforated by a dense grid of drill-pressed holes, Diaphan 15 is hung several inches from the wall. Light passing through the holes bounces off the wall and reflects the

panel’s vivid orange hue. Diaphan 15 beautifully parallels Donald Judd’s Large Stack (this gallery) and Luis Tomasello’s Chromoplastic Mural (Gallery Walk). Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Funds, 2007; 2007.36

Christo Javacheff American, b.1935 Wrapped Walk Ways: Project for the Jacob L. Loose Park, Kansas City, Missouri, 1978 Drawing, printed map, graphite, bic pen, and nylon cloth

Wrapped Walk Ways was sponsored by the Contemporary Art Society and installed by the artist and a team of dedicated Kansas Citians for a period of two weeks in October 1978 in Jacob L. Loose Memorial Park. The project used 136,268 square feet of luminous saffron-colored nylon fabric to cover 104,836 square feet of pathways. It changed dramatically the way people experienced the park.

Christo and his collaborator and wife, Jeanne-Claude are known for their vast, conceptually based environmental projects, such as Running Fence and Valley Curtain. The artists consider social

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interactions to be integral aspects of their projects, as lawyers, ecologists, laborers, and community leaders must participate with the artists in order to realize the work of art.

Anonymous gift, F79-60/1, 2

Dennis Oppenheim American, 1938-2011 Time Pocket, 1968 Photo panels and text, in six parts

In Time Pocket, Dennis Oppenheim, a leading figure in Conceptual art (an art movement in which the idea is more important than the object) presents a witty commentary on the absurdity of rational systems, specifically time.

Oppenheim calls into question the meaning of time. He began with the idea of the International Date Line, the line of longitude that divides the globe into eastern and western hemispheres. Then he transferred a portion of this line to Maine and "drew" it by a diesel-powered skidder on a snowy field. The line stops at the south shore of a lake and resumes on its north shore, leaving the unmarked lake to suggest a site untouched by time.

Anonymous gift in honor of Amy Plumb, 2007.37.1-6

Bruce Nauman American, b. 1941 Setting a Good Corner (Allegory and Metaphor), 1999 Video on DVD

Created by Bruce Nauman, one of the leading Conceptual and Performance artists of our time, Setting a Good Corner is both a document of the artist at work and a work of art. Here, Nauman videotapes himself on his New Mexico ranch as he constructs the

corner from which to stretch a length of fence and hang a gate. The duration of the video (nearly one hour) is equal to the length of time required to set a good corner. The artist’s concentrated labor is accompanied by the sounds of distant highway traffic, birdsong, wind and an unexpected visit from his wife, artist Susan Rothenberg. Using allegory and metaphor, Nauman asks us to consider whether all work performed by an artist is art.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2009.28.1

Dean Fleming American, born 1933 Lime Line, 1965 Acrylic on canvas

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Lime Line—with its eye-popping colors, dynamic geometry, optical rhythms and spatial complexity—is a far cry from the cool, reductive, stable structures of Minimalism. Dean Fleming was part of a New York group called Park Place. They explored pictorial space, the ideas of Buckminster Fuller (inventor of the geodesic dome), Space Age technology, science fiction, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity and related concepts of fourth dimensional space-time. Fleming believed hard-edge abstraction was the language of contemporary culture.

Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust through exchange of the gifts of the Eighth Mid-America Annual Exhibition to the Mid-America Annual Collection, Mrs. A. W. Erickson, Helen Mag Wolcott and Mr. and Mrs. F. Russell Millin, 2009.33

John Baldessari American, b. 1931 Violent Space Series: Two Stares Making a Point but Blocked by a Plane (for Malevich), 1976 Photograph with collage John Baldessari is a conceptual artist interested in surprise and paradox. In Violent Space Series: Two Stares Making a Point but Blocked by a Plane (for Malevich), two men stand on a roof,

staring at a point above the building’s parapet. What they are looking at—the white square or something hidden behind it—remains a mystery. The tilted square itself refers to Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, the early modern painter who was one of the progenitors of geometric abstraction. Baldessari appropriates the white square from Malevich’s most famous painting, Suprematist Composition: White on White (1916). With his typical spirit of ironic play, Baldessari allows the square to retain something of Malevich’s embedded spiritual meaning, while also reminding us that a square is just a square. Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank, Trustee, in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2009.9

Ad Reinhardt American, 1913-1967 No. 10, 1959 Oil on canvas

Ad Reinhardt’s mature work, such a No. 10, influenced much of the Minimalist and Conceptual Art of the 1960s and 1970s.

With its rectangular format composed of perfect squares, No. 10 is part of a series of paintings devoted to variations on colors of extremely close value. Here he has used shades of black, taking extreme care not to betray any trace of brushwork and by association, the artist. Reinhardt aimed to create an art of pure, monochromatic color and form, purged of emotion, representation and narrative.

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Reinhardt said, “Looking isn’t as simple as it looks. Art teaches people how to see.” Accordingly, the viewer must spend time with No. 10, allowing the eyes to adjust, in order to perceive the subtle squares that make up the composition.

Purchase: Nelson Trust through exchange of a gift of Paul Rosenberg, the Renee C. Crowell Trust, and the Nelson Gallery Foundation 89-17

Dale Eldred American, 1933–1993 Sun Structures + Time Incident Project Drawings for The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1979 Photo-processed mylar, applied

materials These drawings are part of a set that Dale Eldred made for Sun Structures + Time Incident, his 1979 exhibition at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art that comprised works located inside and outside the Museum. Facade Mirror Bank consisted of two banks of mirror plates that reflected the sun’s rays onto the Museum’s north facade to create a shimmering dance of golden light. In Rozzelle Court, Eldred transformed a space that was then open to the sky into a kind of solar clock. With each rotation of the Earth, sunlight glided around the court, creating a moving rainbow as it touched mylar prismatic diffraction tape. Eldred’s work reminds us that light is wondrous and elemental. Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the Jedel Family Foundation; F81-55/1, F81-55/4

Sylvia Plimack Mangold American, born 1938 Ruler Reflection, 1977 Acrylic on canvas In Ruler Reflection, Sylvia Mangold straddles Realism and Minimalism as she seeks to “fit nature into geometry.” As a realist painter, she seeks to accurately represent the scene before her. Yet the carefully arranged symmetrical and spare composition, her orderly repetition of wooden floor boards and her precise placement of an EXACT ruler reveal her interest in Minimalism. With exactitude, clarity and firmness of hand, she flawlessly

depicts the space of the room while also creating the illusion of deeper space. Minimalism is famously reflexive, referring only to itself. Ruler Reflection works in much the same way. Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation—Commerce Bank, Trustee, 2010.43

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William Wegman American, born 1934 Any News?, 1973 Silver gelatin print

Bob Wondered What the Bathroom Rug Was Doing in the Kitchen, 1971–1972 Silver gelatin print William Wegman, famously known for his photographs of his pet Weimaraner dogs

posing in humorous situations, is associated with Conceptual art. His work is consistently infused with humor. In Any News? and Bob Wondered What the Bathroom Rug Was Doing in the Kitchen, Wegman questions the state of contemporary art by parodying Minimal and Conceptual art. He pokes fun at classic Minimalist forms—a white rectangle and oval—by representing them as a newspaper and bathroom rug. With characteristic wit and irony, Wegman asks us to consider whether these ordinary household objects are as worthy of contemplation as a white painting.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation—Commerce Bank, Trustee, in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2009.21.1, 2009.21.2

Louise Nevelson American, born Russia, 1899-1988 End of Day-Nightscape IV, 1973 Painted wood Louise Nevelson created monumental sculptures from found, wooden objects such as furniture, crates and discarded

architectural ornamentation. A self-proclaimed “architect of shadows,” Nevelson gave her architectonic arrangements a mysterious and theatrical quality by painting them a uniform matte black, explaining that, to her eye, black was “visually weightless.” Nevelson did not achieve critical acclaim until the 1950s, when she was included in an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Prior to that time, she experienced prejudice characterized by a comment made by a critic in 1941: “We learned that the artist is a woman in time to check our enthusiasm. Had it been otherwise, we might have hailed these sculptural expressions as by surely a great figure among moderns.” Gift of the Friends of Art F74-30

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Harry Bertoia American, 1915-1978, b. Italy Side Chair: Model 420, designed 1952, manufactured 1961 Steel, plastic-coated wire mesh and Naugahyde

Harry Bertoia American, 1915-1978, b. Italy Child’s Chair: Model 426-2, designed 1952, manufactured 1961 Steel, plastic-coated wire mesh and Naugahyde The human body and a plastic-coated wire dish rack may seem like unlikely partners, but in the hands of Harry Bertoia, his combination proved to be one of the most successful chair designs of all the twentieth century. Bertoia, who worked primarily as a sculptor, delighted in bending metal rods into a form that cradled the human body, utilized industrial technology, and

minimized expense through economical materials and mass production. Having solved the chairs’ function requirements, Bertoia reflected, “…when you get right down to it, the chairs are studies in space, form, and metal…If you will look at them, you will find that they are mostly made of air, just like sculpture. Space passes right through them.” The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art purchased the chairs in the 1960s for office and classroom use from Knoll International, who continues to manufacture them. Transferred from the Education and Operations Divisions, 2006.16.1.A,B

Nam June Paik Korean, 1932-2006 Watching Buddha, 1979 Metal Buddha statue, acrylic platform, vintage television set box, inserted more modern television, and video camera

Composer, philosopher, conceptual artists and performer Nam June Paik is considered the father of video art. He discovered the artistic possibilities of video when he began working with a Sony Portapak in 1965. In Watching Buddha, Paik created a closed-circuit

system by linking input from the video camera to output from the TV monitor. The juxtaposition between the motionless Buddha and his still, yet continually recorded image makes an ironic statement. It speaks to the Buddha’s meditative, heightened state of mind and the goal of living in

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The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Object Label Copy – Galleries L3 & L4 February, 2012

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the present moment, in contrast to the blank stare and mindlessness of the electronic television monitor. Both meditation and TV viewing alter brainwave activity.

Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the William T. Kemper Foundation---Commerce Bank, Trustee, in honor of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2009.35.A-K