New Book | A Deadly Art: European Crossbows, 1250–1850
Johann Gottfried Hänisch the Elder (German, Dresden, 1696–1778), Small Crossbow (Bolzenschnepper), probably for a Woman or a Child, 1738 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.429), catalogue entry #15. Read more here»
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Distributed by Yale UP:
Dirk Breiding, A Deadly Art: European Crossbows, 1250–1850 (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014), 160 pages, ISBN: 978-0300197044, $25.
The advent of the crossbow more than 2,500 years ago effected dramatic changes for hunters and warriors. For centuries, it was among the most powerful and widely used handheld weapons, and its popularity endures to this day. A Deadly Art presents a lively, accessible survey of the crossbow’s “golden age,” along with detailed descriptions of twenty-four remarkable examples.
Beginning in the middle ages, the European aristocracy’s enthusiasm for the crossbow heralded shooting competitions and pageants that featured elaborately decorated weapons bearing elegant embellishments of rare materials and prized artistry. In addition to being highly functional, these weapons were magnificent works of art.
Dirk Breiding is J. J. Medveckis Curator of Arms and Armor at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Exhibition | Grand Collecting: Richard Wilson and the Ford Collection
One more to add to the list of exhibitions of work by Richard Wilson, on this the 300th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition as described at ArtFund:
Grand Collecting: Richard Wilson and Masterworks from the Ford Collection
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, 11 January — 31 May 2014
Richard Wilson, Syon House from Richmond Gardens, Evening, 1761 (?)
(Gainsborough’s House)
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The Ford Collection originated in the 18th century thanks to Benjamin Booth, who amassed the largest set of works by Royal Academician Richard Wilson, held at the time. Booth’s grandson Richard Ford, an author, traveller and connoisseur, continued collecting into the 19th century, and in later years Richard’s great grandson Sir Brinsley Ford strengthened the existing areas of work as well as introducing his own interests.
At the centre of the collection are works by Richard Wilson, one of the leading figures in British landscape painting, whose influence was felt across Europe. Along with artists including Thomas Gainsborough he created the country’s ‘landscape tradition’, with John Hoppner proclaiming: ‘We recollect no painter, who, with so much originality of manner, united such truth and grandeur of expression’.
The works in this exhibition, predominantly collected by Booth, show the breadth of his expression from early drawings in Rome to paintings in the 1770s. Other featured artists include renowned English painter, John Frederick Lewis.
2014 marks 300 years since the birth of Richard Wilson and the beginning of the Georgian age. In celebration, Gainsborough’s House is displaying the 1714 Sudbury Map, hand drawn map on vellum using iron gall ink and various shades of watercolour. It was created by Cornelius Brewer, whose signature can be seen with the inscription and it contains the earliest image of Gainsborough’s House.
New Book | Paris au XVIIIe siècle
Published by Parigramme and available from Artbooks.com:
Nicolas Courtin, Paris au XVIIIe siècle : entre fantaisie rocaille et renouveau classique (Paris: Parigramme, 2013), 192 pages, ISBN: 978-2840967934, 45€ / $88.
La première ambition du XVIIIe siècle aurait-elle été de ne plus «périr en symétrie», comme s’en plaignait Mme de Maintenon en pensant aux courants d’air de Versailles ? En l’occurrence, c’est la sévérité du Grand Siècle qui est en cause, plus que les belles ordonnances, encore promises à de beaux jours. L’architecture privée illustre l’esprit nouveau en composant dans un Paris où l’espace devient rare et les parcelles irrégulières ; à cette contrainte s’ajoute l’aspiration à des espaces intimes et aimables. «Nos petits appartements sont tournés comme des coquilles rondes et polies», note Louis-Sébastien Mercier. Les sinuosités rocaille des intérieurs gagnent parfois les façades avant que les bâtisseurs ne puisent dans l’Antiquité l’inspiration d’une renaissance néoclassique. Celle-ci demeurera un témoin sûr du goût français, partout imité, tandis que les embellissements publics portent la marque pédagogique et moralisatrice des Lumières. Et pour cette ville de chair et de pierre, combien de Paris de papier ? Le siècle n’est avare ni de
projets ni de plans… qu’il reviendra au suivant de mettre
en oeuvre.
Nicolas Courtin est historien de l’art, chargé de mission auprès de la Commission du Vieux Paris et enseignant. Il a notamment publié Paris Grand siècle (Parigramme, 2008) et L’Art d’habiter à Paris au XVIIe siècle (Faton, 2011).
Sample pages are available here»
Exhibition | Wedding Dresses, 1775–2014
Press release for the upcoming exhibition at the V&A (also see the exhibition blog). . .
Wedding Dresses, 1775–2014
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, 3 May 2014 — 15 March 2015
Curated by Edwina Ehrman
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The V&A’s spring 2014 exhibition will trace the development of the fashionable white wedding dress and its interpretation by leading couturiers and designers, offering a panorama of fashion over the last two centuries. Wedding Dresses 1775–2014 will feature over 80 of the most romantic, glamorous and extravagant wedding outfits from the V&A’s collection. It will include important new acquisitions as well as loans such as the embroidered silk coat design by Anna Valentine and worn by The Duchess of Cornwall for the blessing after her marriage to HRH The Prince of Wales (2005), the purple Vivienne Westwood dress chosen by Dita Von Teese (2005), and the Dior outfits worn by Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale on their wedding day (2002).
Displayed chronologically over two floors, the exhibition will focus on bridal wear. Most of the outfits were worn in Britain, by brides of many faiths. Alongside the dresses will be accessories including jewellery, shoes, garters, veils, wreaths, hats and corsetry as well as fashion sketches and personal photographs. Garments worn by bridegrooms and attendants will also be on display. The exhibition will investigate the histories of the garments, revealing fascinating and personal details about the lives of the wearers, giving an intimate insight into their occupations, circumstances and fashion choices.
Silk brocade gown, hat, and shoes, 1780. Olive Matthews Collection, Chertsey Museum. Photo by John Chase.
The opening section of the exhibition will feature some of the earliest examples of wedding fashion including a silk satin court dress (1775) and a ‘polonaise’ style brocade gown with straw bergère hat (1780) lent by the Chertsey Museum. The preference for white in the 19th century will be demonstrated by a white muslin wedding dress decorated with flowers, leaves and berries (1807) recently acquired by the V&A, and a wedding outfit embellished with pearl beads design by Charles Frederick Worth (1880). As the 19th century drew to a close historical costume influenced fashion. A fine example will be a copy of a Paris model designed by Paquin Lalanne et Cie made by Stern Brothers of New York (1890) for an American bride.
Designs from the 1920s and 1930s will illustrate the glamour of bridal wear which was now influenced by evening fashions, dresses were slim-hipped and made from richly beaded textured fabrics and slinky bias-cut satin. During the Second World War when clothing restrictions were introduced, brides needed to make imaginative and practical fashion choices. They used non-rationed fabrics such as upholstery materials, net curtaining and parachute silk, or married in a smart day dress or service uniform. On display will be a buttercup patterned dress made in light-weight upholstery fabric by London dressmaker Ella Dolling (1941).
Wedding Dresses 1775–2014 will also explore the growth of the wedding industry and the effect of increasing media focus on wedding fashions. Improvements in photography in the early 20th century encouraged photojournalism and society weddings were reported in detail in the national press and gossip columns. Two of the most spectacular wedding dresses on show will be the Norman Hartnell dress made for Margaret Whigham (later Duchess of Argyll) for her marriage to Charles Sweeny (1933), and the Charles James ivory silk satin dress worn by Barbara ‘Baba’ Beaton for her marriage to Alec Hambro (1934). These dramatic dresses will be seen alongside archive film and news clippings of the occasions as examples of society ‘celebrity’ weddings.
The mezzanine level will feature wedding garments from 1960 to 2014, taking the exhibition right up to date with Spring/Summer 2014 designs by Jenny Packham and Temperley Bridal. Emphasising the glamour and spectacle of weddings today, key designers will include Vivienne Westwood, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Lanvin, Vera Wang, Jasper Conran, Bruce Oldfield, Osman, Hardy Amies, Bellville Sassoon, Mr.Fish, John Bates and Jean Muir, with millinery by Philip Treacy and Stephen Jones. This section will explore the changing social and cultural attitudes to the wedding ceremony and marriage in the late 20th century and will feature examples of innovative and unconventional wedding outfits including dresses designed by Gareth Pugh and Pam Hogg for the weddings of Katie Shillingford (2011) and Mary Charteris (2012).
A version of the exhibition previously toured to Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria, Australia (2011), Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2011–12), National Museum of Singapore (2012), and Western Australian Museum, Perth, Australia (2012–13).
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From the V&A:
Edwina Ehrman, The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions, 2nd edition (London: V&A Publishing, 2014), 208 pages, ISBN 978-1851778133, £30 / $50.
This sumptuous book draws on wedding garments in the V&A’s collection, photographs, letters, memoirs, newspaper accounts and genealogical research to explore the history of the wedding dress and the traditions that have developed around it since 1700. It focuses on the white wedding dress, which became fashionable in the early nineteenth century and is now chosen by women across the world. The book considers the way couturiers and designers have challenged and refreshed the traditional white dress and the influence of the wedding industry, whose antecedents lie in the commercialization of the wedding in Victorian Britain. The Wedding Dress is not only about costume, but also about the cultivation of the image of the bride. This book is a glorious tribute to an exquisite, stylish, glamorous gown, the romance of its evolution and the splendour of its design.
Edwina Ehrman is a curator of Textiles and Fashion at the V&A and of the exhibition The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashions. She is co-author of The London Look: Fashion from Street to Catwalk and a contributor
to The Englishness of English Dress.
Call for Panel Proposals | 2016 Congress in the History of Art, Beijing
As posted at CAA News (14 March 2014), From the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International de l’Histoire de l’Art, known as CIHA) and from the conveners of the Beijing Committee for the Congress: Professors LaoZhu, Fan Di’an, and Shao Dazhen.
Thirty-Fourth Congress in the History of Art
Beijing, September 2016
Session Proposals are due by 10 April 2014
The organizing committee for the thirty-fourth Congress in the History of Art, which will take place in Beijing, China, in September 2016, warmly invites expressions of interest from the international community of art historians. The concepts for the sessions are outlined below. We ask for expressions of interest from scholars who wish to develop these themes as session chairs.
Each session will have an international chair and a Chinese chair. A Chinese chair may be from Chinese mainland, Taiwan, or abroad. An early career researcher might serve as associate chair, if necessary. The two cochairs (and an early career researcher, if there is one) will act as a committee to define and refine the session’s concept for the preliminary congress in 2015, and to select presenters for the major congress in Beijing in 2016.
Applications for chairs may be made by academics or independent scholars. We want to remind applicants that no member of the CIHA board, and no one having been a chair in the Nuremberg Congress in 2012, can apply for serving as chair of a session at the Beijing Congress.
Applicants should:
1. Be thoroughly acquainted with the most recent developments in the field of art history relevant to the topic of their session
2. Be able to develop the chosen concept by organizing relevant symposia and workshops before 2016, to initiate dialogue and discussion, and to identify important issues for discussion at CIHA 2016 in Beijing
3. Be able to identify global experts in the appropriate fields and to collaborate with them
4. To be present at CIHA 2016 in Beijing
Applicants should send the following to the CIHA scientific secretary with copy to Chinese committee:
1. Number and title of the proposed session
2. 1–2 pages explaining the perspective they intend to give to the session and the main ideas they would like to be developed and discussed
3. A first draft of the call for papers to be developed with the Chinese chair if the session is selected
4. A short CV stressing the activities and publications related to the session
The deadline for applications is April 10, 2014. The list of the chairs will be established during the CIHA board meeting in Marseilles, France (June 25, 2014) and immediately announced on CIHA website and the Beijing Congress website.
Session Themes
The sessions as defined by the National Committee of the People’s Republic of China and the International Committee for the History of Art are as follows:
1. Words and Concepts【语词与概念】
2. The Rank of Art【标准与品评】
3. Imagination and Projection【想象与投射】
4. Appreciation and Utility【欣赏与实用】
5. Self-Awareness or Self-Affirmation【自觉与自律】
6. Politics of Identity: Tradition and Origin【传统与渊源】
7. Translation and Change【流传与嬗变】
8. Art and Taboo【禁忌与教化】
9. Autonomy and Elusion【独立与超脱】
10. Gendered Practices【性别与妇女】
11. Landscape and Spectacle【风景与奇观】
12. Garden and Courtyard【园林与庭院】
13. Transmission and Adoption【传播与接受】
14. Othering and Foreignness【他者与陌生】
15. Creative Misunderstanding【误解与曲用】
16. Commodity and Market【商品与市场】
17. Display and Observation【展示与观看】
18. Media and Visuality【媒体与视觉】
19. History of Beauty vs. History of Art【审美与艺术史】
20. Professional Education and Aesthetic Education【专业与美育】
21. Connecting Art Histories and World Art【多元与世界】
Full session theme descriptions are available at CAA News»
Exhibition | The Coast and the Sea
Press release (4 October 2013) from D. Giles:
Linda S. Ferber, The Coast and the Sea: Marine and Maritime Art in America (London: D. Giles Limited, 2013), 104 pages, ISBN 978-1907804311, $30 / £20.
The Society of the Four Arts, Palm Beach, Florida, 25 January — 9 March 2014
The Baker Museum of Art, Naples, Florida, 19 April — 6 July 2014
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, Maine, January — May 2015
The Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, Connecticut, 6 June — 13 September 2015
The New York State Museum, Albany, New York, 24 October 2015 — 22 February 2016
A Southeast Prospect of the City of New York, ca. 1756–61. Oil on canvas. 38 x 72 1/2 in. (96.5 x 184.2 cm). Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
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The Coast and the Sea: Marine and Maritime Art in America will be published by D Giles Limited, in association with the New-York Historical Society, in December 2013. It is an appealing and colourful volume which presents over 50 of the best marine paintings and artifacts from the New-York Historical Society’s impressive maritime art collection.
The works range in date from 1750 to 1940, and are by eminent marine artists like Thomas Birch, John Frederick Kensett, and Charlton T. Chapman. Highlights include large format canvasses of famous sea battles, ships at work, portraits of heroic sea captains, dashing naval officers like James Gordon Bennett Jr. and pioneering merchants, such as the aptly named Preserved Fish of New York, prominent in shipping in the early 19th century. There are also maritime themed objects such as an engraved whale’s tooth from the late 19th century, and a silver presentation urn commemorating acts of bravery from the War of 1812. An essay by curator Linda S. Ferber places the works within their wider historical and cultural narrative.
The works are then arranged thematically rather than by artist or period; there is for example a chapter on the Anglo-Dutch tradition in American marine art: the War of 1812 with its great sea battles and heroes and romantic and idealized visions of the sea. A section on the merchant marine and maritime trade features paintings of major trading posts in and around the Pearl River Delta, including Hong Kong; some of these paintings were by a group of Chinese artists working in the European style specifically for the export market. There are views of the Hudson River and the great Port of New York, as well as Gilded Age nostalgia for the great age of sail, with its clipper ships and majestic wind-jammers.
Linda S. Ferber is Senior Art Historian, the New-York Historical Society.
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Note (added 1 August 2014) — The original version of this posting included only the first two exhibition venues.
Call for Papers | Fraktur, 1683–1850
From the Facebook page of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies:
Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683–1850
Philadelphia, 5–7 March 2015
Proposals due by 15 April 2014
Reward of Merit (Belohnung),watercolor on laid paper
10.6 cm x 9.4 cm, ca. 1790s (Free Library)
Paper and panel proposals are invited for a conference on Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683–1850 to be jointly sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5–7 March 2015. The conference will coincide with major exhibitions at both the Museum and the Free Library. The Philadelphia Museum will be exhibiting fraktur from the collection of Joan and Victor Johnson, featuring many extraordinary manuscript and printed examples from southeastern Pennsylvania along with other objects, and will also be publishing a comprehensive scholarly catalogue of the Johnson collection [more information on the collection is available from a 2013 article at The Magazine Antiques]. The Free Library will feature historically significant, rare and unique examples of Fraktur, manuscripts, broadsides, and printed books from the Henry Stauffer Borneman Pennsylvania German Collection. Presently many of these items are available to scholars in an online database and are featured on the Free Library’s PA German Collection Blog.
These two exhibitions and their accompanying digital and printed components offer a tremendous opportunity for boundary-crossing discussion and analysis. While German-speaking people in Pennsylvania are often conceptualized as a distinctive and isolated group, the exhibitions and this conference encourages efforts to see them as a common subject of inquiry that provides a point of entry for a much broader understanding of the significance of art and culture and for how we understand human experience in the past and the present.
Among the potential themes that the conference hopes to explore are:
• the place of ethnicity within the Early American Republic
• Philadelphia’s historic and on-going relationship to its rural, small-town, and suburban hinterlands
• Pennsylvania Germans and acculturation
• varieties of German culture in European, Atlantic, and non-Pennsylvania contexts
• digital projects as a transformative force for studying art, material culture, history, genealogy, and our understanding of the past
• the relationship of libraries, museums, and university-based academic programs to the general public
• the strengths and weaknesses of art and material culture for understanding the past
• the role of the collector in preserving the past for the future
Proposals are welcome for papers of 25 to 30 pages in length, which will be pre-circulated to all conference participants. Suggestions for complete panels will also be considered, but the organizers reserve the right to accept, reject, or reassign individual papers. Please submit proposals of approximately 500 words, along with curriculum vitae, to mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu no later than 15 April 2014. Accepted panelists will be notified by late May 2014. Papers will be due for pre-circulation no later than 15 January 2015. Some support for participants’ travel and lodging will be available for paper presenters.
Joshua Lane Appointed Curator of Furniture at Winterthur
As reported at ArtFix Daily (24 February 2014). . .
Dr. David P. Roselle, Director of Winterthur Musem, Garden & Library, announced the appointment of Joshua W. Lane as the Lois F. and Henry S. McNeil Curator of Furniture at Winterthur Museum.
“Josh Lane is one of the leading scholars in the field of early American furniture,” said Roselle, “and we look forward to welcoming him to Winterthur.” He will start his new position on April 14, 2014.
Lane received his B.A. in American Studies from Amherst College and his M.Phil. from Yale. He worked at the Connecticut Historical Society and the Stamford Historical Society before moving to Historic Deerfield, where he has curated the furniture collection since 2000. In addition, Lane served as the Director of the Summer Fellowship Program at Historic Deerfield between 2005 and 2012.
His most recent exhibitions include Into the Woods: Crafting Early American Furniture, an innovative examination of the materials, tools, and evidence of workmanship in furniture: and Furniture Masterworks: Tradition and Innovation in Western Massachusetts, part of Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture, a collaborative project involving eleven institutions including Winterthur Museum.
“Josh is highly regarded for his exhibitions, teaching, research, and scholarship,” said Linda S. Eaton, John L. and Marjorie P. McGraw Director of Collections, “and we are all delighted that he is coming to Winterthur.”
New Books | Beastly London / Gorgeous Beasts
Along with these two books (the second of which I should have posted months ago), readers interested in animals may find useful the review essay by Simona Cohen, “Animal Imagery in Renaissance Art,” in Renaissance Quarterly 67 (March 2014): 164–80. -CH
From Reaktion:
Hannah Velten, Beastly London: A History of Animals in the City (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 288 pags, ISBN: 978-1780231679, £29 / $50.
Horse-drawn cabs rattling through the streets, terrified cattle being herded along congested thoroughfares to Smithfield market, pigs squealing and grunting in back yards—London was once filled with a cacophony of animal noises (and smells). But over the last thirty years, the city seems to have finally banished animals from its streets, apart from a few well-loved beasts such as the ravens at the Tower of London and the shire horses that pull the Lord Mayor’s golden coach.
Londoners once shared their homes with all kinds of animals—pets, livestock and vermin—and the streets were full of horses, cattle and the animal entertainers that performed to passers-by. Animals from all corners of the globe were imported through London’s docks and exotic beasts became popular attractions at venues such as the Zoological Gardens or lived in the private menageries of kings and naturalists. The city’s residents were entertained by performing fleas, mathematically gifted horses and dancing bears, as well as more bloodthirsty pursuits such as shooting and dog- and cockfights. In the Victorian age the city, not before time, became the birthplace of animal welfare societies and animal rights campaigns. Yet just as conditions gradually improved for the beasts of London, markets, slaughterhouses and dairies began to be moved to the suburbs, and the automobile eventually replaced the horse. The number of resident animals fell, and they are no longer a large part of everyday life in the capital—apart from a stalwart few, such as pets, pigeons and pests. Beastly London explores the complex and changing relationship between Londoners of all backgrounds and their animal neighbours, and reveals how animals helped to shape the city’s economic, social and cultural history.
Hannah Velten is a freelance writer based in Fletching, Sussex, and the author of Cow (Reaktion, 2007) and Milk (Reaktion, 2010).
C O N T E N T S
Introduction: Revealing the Beasts
1. Livestock: Londoners’ Nuisance Neighbours
2. Working Animals: Straining Every Muscle
3. Sporting Animals: Natural Instincts Exploited
4. Animals as Entertainers: Performance, Peculiarity and Pressure
5. Exotic Animals: The Allure of the Foreign and the Wild
6. Pampered Pets and Sad Strays
7. London Wildlife: The Persecuted and the Celebrated
Final Thoughts: An Apology and a Pardon
References
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
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From Penn State UP:
Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist, eds., Gorgeous Beasts: Animal Bodies in Historical Perspective (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 258 pages, ISBN: 978-0271054018, $50.
Gorgeous Beasts takes a fresh look at the place of animals in history and art. Refusing the traditional subordination of animals to humans, the essays gathered here examine a rich variety of ways animals contribute to culture: as living things, as scientific specimens, as food, weapons, tropes, and occasions for thought and creativity. History and culture set the terms for this inquiry. As history changes, so do the ways animals participate in culture. Gorgeous Beasts offers a series of discontinuous but probing studies of the forms their participation takes.
This collection presents the work of a wide range of scholars, critics, and thinkers from diverse disciplines: philosophy, literature, history, geography, economics, art history, cultural studies, and the visual arts. By approaching animals from such different perspectives, these essays broaden the scope of animal studies to include specialists and nonspecialists alike, inviting readers from all backgrounds to consider the place of animals in history and art. Combining provocative critical insights with arresting visual imagery, Gorgeous Beasts advances a challenging new appreciation of animals as co-inhabitants and co-creators of culture.
Joan B. Landes is Walter L. and Helen Ferree Professor of Early Modern History and Women’s Studies at The Pennsylvania State University. Paula Young Lee is an independent scholar and the editor of Meat, Modernity, and the Rise of the Slaughterhouse (2008). Paul Youngquist is Professor of English at the University of Colorado.
C O N T E N T S
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction, Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist
1. Animal Subjects: Between Nature and Invention in Buffon’s Natural History Illustrations, Joan B. Landes
2. Renaissance Animal Things, Erica Fudge
3. The Cujo Effect, Paul Youngquist
4. On Vulnerability: Studies from Life That Ought Not to Be Copied, Ron Broglio
5. The Rights of Man and the Rights of Animality at the End of the Eighteenth Century, Pierre Serna, Translated by Vito Caiati and Joan B. Landes
6. Calling the Wild, Harriet Ritvo
7. Trophies and Taxidermy, Nigel Rothfels
8. Fishing for Biomass, Sajay Samuel and Dean Bavington
9. Daniel Spoerri’s Carnival of Animals, Cecilia Novero
A Conversation with the Artist Mark Dion, Joan B. Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index
Installation | Molly Hatch’s ‘Physic Garden’ at the High Museum
Warm thanks to Courtney Barnes of Style Court for noting this one. More information and photos are available at her website. -CH
Press release (5 February 2014) from Atlanta’s High Museum of Art:
Two-story tall installation of 450 hand-painted plates were inspired by works in the High Museum’s Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics
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The High Museum of Art has commissioned contemporary ceramicist Molly Hatch to present Physic Garden, a two-story tall, hand-painted ‘plate painting’, which reinterprets works from its renowned decorative arts and design collection. On view starting March 12, the ‘plate painting’ will be installed in the High’s Margaretta Taylor Lobby and will be comprised of 456 plates featuring an original design inspired by two ca. 1755 Chelsea Factory plates from the Museum’s Frances and Emory Cocke Collection of English Ceramics, which totals more than 300 works.
The historic source plates depict realistic flora and fauna in the Chelsea ‘Hans Sloane’ style of the early 1750s. The influential Chelsea Physic Garden, a botanical garden founded by the Society of Apothecaries in London in 1673, was leased by collector Hans Sloane and likely inspired neighboring factory porcelain decorators.
The High’s installation will be the largest ever produced by Hatch. She has created other works based on source material from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Hatch also designs her own line of products for national retailers such as Anthropologie.
“I am thrilled to work with such a talented contemporary artist as Molly and to have the outcome be such a dynamic and monumental acquisition for the High. One of the most exciting aspects of ‘Physic Garden’ is seeing the historic decorative arts and design collection through the lens of a creative young artist. We can’t wait for our visitors to experience this new work as well as revisit our important and beloved collection of English ceramics,” says Sarah Schleuning, curator of decorative arts and design at the High.
Hatch often sources historic works to make a contemporary counterpart, however this project marks the first time she is sourcing historic decorative arts from a museum collection to create a site-specific ‘plate painting’. To create the ‘plate painting’, Hatch digitally altered high-resolution images of the surface decoration of the source material to draft a new composition. She altered the original color, scale and composition of the Chelsea designs and then projected the new images onto 456 dinner plates (each 9.5 inches in diameter). She then hand-painted each plate using the projected image as a guide.
The complete installation will measure approximately 20 feet high by 17 feet wide. The Chelsea source plates are also on view in the High’s permanent collection Gallery 200, which patrons may visit to view the historic material. The High is acquiring the piece, which can re-installed by the Museum at future dates in smaller incarnations or in other locations.
“I encourage the viewer to see ceramics as a part of the fine art continuum—viewing plates as one would view a painting,” said Hatch. “For this installation, I’ve re-worked the surface imagery to create a new composition that reflects the historic. The artwork becomes an exploration of the relationship between the historic and the contemporary – crossing over categories of decorative art, design and fine art.”
Molly Hatch
Born in 1978, the daughter of a painter and a dairy farmer, Molly Hatch divided her childhood between physical labor, play, and creating art. She studied drawing, painting, printmaking, and ceramics and receiving her bachelor’s degree of fine arts from the Museum School in Boston in 2000. After several ceramic residencies and apprenticeships in the U.S. and abroad, she received her master’s degree of fine arts degree in ceramics at the University of Colorado in Boulder in 2008. In 2009, she was awarded the Arts/Industry Residency in Pottery at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in Wisconsin, which laid the foundation for her career as an artist designer. Hatch works from her home studio in Northampton, Mass., on everything from designing and illustration to one-of-a-kind pieces. Her work has been widely collected and commissioned and is exhibited nationally and internationally at art fairs and museums. Hatch’s work has also been widely licensed in partnership with Anthropologie, Galison, Chronicle, and other companies for homeware and stationery products. Her work has been featured in numerous publications from House Beautiful magazine to online publications such as Design*Sponge and Apartment Therapy. For the last two years, Hatch has been teaching a tableware course at Rhode Island School of Design. She also teaches ceramic and illustration workshops across the country as well as online courses through Creativebug. Her first book will be released in 2015.
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