“Tsutsumimono”

Sofia Penny Curatorial Intern in the Asian art department at the Dallas Museum of Art

Tanaka Y?, Tsutsumimono (“Wrapped Item”), 2022. Glazed stoneware, 24 3/8 x 18 1/2 x 19 in. Dallas Museum of Art, Cecil and Ida Green Acquisition Fund, Susan Mead Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund, and Discretionary Decorative Arts Fund. 2023.71.

New to the Dallas Museum of Art collection, Tsutsumimono (“Wrapped Item”) by Tanaka Y? carries a deep history of the art of Japanese wrapping and connects viewers to its contemporary traditions. This ceramic glazed stoneware, measuring 24 3/8 x 18 1/2 x 19 inches, commands attention through Tanaka’s bold use of color. The work exudes a tangible presence, enhanced by the interplay of color and size. It contrasts weights—where a seemingly concealed object anchors against the light, fluid, and malleable imitation of fabric. The idea of fabric is communicated through the undulating forms that appear to ripple, roll, and curve, falling into the object, all working to conceal its form and essence from the viewer. The consistency of the clay further emphasizes the textile-like quality in its uniformity and texture. The sculpture captivates its audience as they navigate the work, allowing their imaginations to grapple with and attempt to unravel its mysterious nature.

Building on this interplay of material and illusion, contemporary third-generation Japanese ceramic artist Tanaka Y? creates clay objects resembling vessels wrapped in the traditional wrapping cloth, furoshiki. Furoshiki is a single fabric used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. Furoshiki enjoyed wide usage for over 1,200 years, continuing until the end of the Edo period (1615-1868 CE). The custom originates from the Nara period (710-784 CE), when it safeguarded the valuables of emperors. The oldest known wrapping cloth from the Nara period is preserved at the Shosoin, a wooden storage house at the Todaiji Temple in Nara. During the Heian period (794-1185 CE), furoshiki was used to wrap and carry clothes for the nobility. In the Muromachi period (1338-1573 CE), Shogun Ashikaga built a great steam bathhouse where noble guests used silk cloths with their family crests to keep their clothes separate while bathing. In the Edo period, public bathhouses (sento) became widespread, and furoshiki was used as a mat while undressing and as a wrapping cloth to carry clothes. The name furoshiki combines two words: “furo,” meaning “bath,” and “shiki,” meaning “to spread.” Before furoshiki became associated with public baths, people called it hirazutsumi, meaning “flat folded bundle.” Eventually, furoshiki became essential for merchants to transport their goods and served a functional role for the working class during the Edo period. Initially used to carry clothes, furoshiki evolved to wrap almost anything, symbolizing respect for others on gift-giving occasions and imbuing special meanings to the wrapping materials and the wrapped goods. Modern furoshiki are made from various materials, including silk, cotton, and synthetic fibers, with designs varying depending on their use. The most commonly used furoshiki are squares measuring 27 3/5 or 35 2/5 inches wide. While many people regard furoshikias unique to Japanese culture, similar traditions exist in other countries, such as Korea, where a patchwork wrapping cloth called bojagi has been utilized for centuries.

Furoshiki is a versatile medium for utility and personal expression and a sustainable alternative to plastic waste. After World War II, its usage declined with the rise of plastic shopping bags. However, with growing environmental awareness, furoshiki has regained popularity—compact when folded and reusable, furoshiki is an eco-friendly and convenient wrapping cloth. In 2006, Japanese Minister of the Environment Yuriko Koike introduced the Mottainai Furoshiki campaign, which loosely translates as “use a furoshiki to avoid waste,” to promote its use. Its adoption is believed to help reduce household waste from plastic bags.

The furoshiki can transform into whatever the user needs it to be. Just as the fabric can be wrapped and used in countless ways, Tanaka reflects the versatility by appearing to conceal the objects within this work, Tsutsumimono, even though the sculpture is empty inside. This deliberate concealment encourages viewers to use their imagination and speculate about what might lie hidden beneath the fabric. The artist elevates an everyday object often overlooked. Tanaka centralizes the furoshiki in her work, blurring the distinction between object and vessel. The furoshikielevates whatever it envelops, prompting consideration of its fabric and traditional significance as art in its own right. Examining the deliberate folds and Tanaka’s signature knot that sinks into the object draws one into a vision of the physical process of how the object was folded. If one knows how, almost anything can be wrapped in furoshiki, regardless of size or shape, with ingenuity and the proper folding technique. Each stage, from crafting the fabric to folding it over the object and transporting it to its destination, embodies elements of artistry and performance. With this work Tanaka brings attention to the often overlooked details. The furoshiki aligns perfectly with the Japanese cultural tradition of meticulously wrapping even the most seemingly insignificant objects, a practice that continues to thrive in Japan today.

Still from Interiors: Mysteries in Clay by Tanaka Yu, 3:25 minutes. https://www.mirviss.com/artists/tanaka-yu

While Tsutsumimono may appear slab-built, Tanaka coil-builds her forms using Shigaraki-blended clay. This method provides superior porosity and plasticity, granting her greater artistic freedom. Additionally, Shigaraki clay further infuses her work with historical depth. Shigaraki, one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns, is among the oldest pottery-producing regions in the country. Located at a crossroads for transportation between Nara, Yamashiro in the central Kinai region, and the Tokai region (Nagoya area), Shigaraki has continuously produced pottery from the 13th century to the present. Throughout its 800-year-old tradition, Shigaraki has primarily focused on creating utilitarian vessels. While the forms have evolved and glazes have become increasingly refined, most Shigaraki products share a common characteristic: they are large, sturdy containers meant for storage or other practical functions. Shigaraki clay underscores a continuity with the past, creating a dialogue between traditional and contemporary Japanese art. By incorporating this clay into her art, Tanaka creates an intersection of utility and beauty, compelling attention to everyday materials.

The artist’s choice to use turmeric yellow is steeped in historical significance. In Japan, people have traditionally used ukon-nuno (turmeric cloth) to wrap antique crafts because they believe turmeric repels worms and insects. Tanaka uses this same deep yellow hue to wrap her ceramic work, paying homage to the tradition. For surface treatment, Tanaka smooths the surfaces with a sponge and then applies a thin layer of clay slip using either a brush or airbrush. To achieve its distinctive deep yellow color, she applies two coats of pigment before the initial firing, repeating this process up to four times until reaching the desired hue.

She cleverly manipulates and folds her clay to imitate a textile, creating her representation of furoshiki. By doing so, she mimics the traditional process of wrapping a furoshiki around an object, blending clay sculpting techniques with the art of fabric folding. This approach combines two histories of techniques while paying homage to the cultural significance of furoshiki.

Tanaka’s works are celebrated both within Japan and internationally. They have been exhibited in several institutions and museums, garnering significant accolades for a relatively young artist in the Japanese ceramic industry. As a Kyoto Saga University of Arts student, where she earned a B.F.A. in ceramics,Tanaka initially studied oil painting but soon switched to ceramics because she enjoyed the physical demands of working with clay. She then went on to earn an M.F.A. in ceramics from Kyoto City University of Arts. Tanaka currently lives and works in Kyoto.

It is essential to recognize the broader context of the Japanese ceramic field, which has historically been dominated by men. Like many other arts and crafts in Japan, the ceramics field was often passed down through male lineage within families. Men typically held the prestigious positions of master ceramists and were the primary figures recognized for their contributions to the art form. However, the landscape has been changing, particularly since the mid-20th century. Women have increasingly entered the field, gaining recognition and acclaim for their work. Despite ongoing challenges related to gender roles and societal expectations, female ceramists have made significant contributions and continue pushing the medium’s boundaries. Notable contemporary female ceramists, such as Tanaka Y?, reflect this shift and women’s growing presence and influence in the Japanese ceramic art field.

Tsutsumimono not only honors the rich history and cultural significance of furoshiki but also reimagines it through the medium of clay. Tanaka’s innovative approach and artistic craftsmanship bridge traditional Japanese practices with contemporary art, inviting viewers to engage with the work on multiple levels. As environmental consciousness grows, the revival offuroshiki underscores the importance of sustainable practices, making Tanaka’s creations both a nod to the past and a beacon for the future. Tsutsumimono is currently on view in the Japan gallery on the Level 3. Visit the Dallas Museum of Art to experience this remarkable artwork for yourself!

Sean Earley Remembering Sean Earley

Sean Earley (1953–1992) was born in New Orleans and raised in Hurst, Texas. After studying at the University of Texas at Arlington and exhibiting in Dallas at galleries such as 500X, he moved to New York to pursue painting, making a living as an illustrator on the side. Earley went on to attain a residency at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, Italy, and gallery representation at Bridgewater Gallery, rising to relative success in his budding career through numerous group and solo shows. However, these professional achievements were followed by an HIV and consequential AIDS diagnosis, pushing Earley to amass his legacy through painting for the remainder of his life. He moved back to Texas in his final years to be near family and fell in love with his home state, creating artwork that focused on Texas iconography and narratives. Being a queer artist himself, Earley also assisted in the DMA’s first Day Without Art, a nationwide day of mourning and activism for the AIDS crisis in 1989. He died three years later, in June 1992, due to complications from AIDS. 

Earley’s work employs a distinctly medieval sense of depth and composition, stacking people against one another as their elongated, flat bodies and dreary faces set an uneasy pace. The medieval inspiration furthers the stagnant dread of his subjects in both historical associations and scenery. Intentionally combining postmodern ideation with an ever-present archaic angst, Earley’s subjects embody modern mundanity and other timeliness simultaneously. 

The Rapture reflects Earley’s deep sense of unnerving detail as people ascend into the heavens from tasks left unattended at particularly inconvenient times. Scenes such as people mid-drive in downtown Dallas alongside a dog being dragged up by its leash from its owner’s enrapturement mix discomfort into closure. The consequences of the rapture, a Christian end-time belief in which God will raise his believers into heaven, are as uniquely curious as they are unsettling. As someone who spent the majority of his life during the Cold War, Earley developed a fascination with the motionless angst of the time and the looming threat of nuclear war during an otherwise calm postwar American dream. Earley found what he called a “distant kinship” with medieval art, which was made by men caught in a similar perpetual fear, even if for different reasons. This is profoundly evident in The Rapture as Dallas residents move upward in the final moments of Earth, leaving behind their mortal lives in a vibrant yet devastating display. 

Situated in downtown Dallas’s converging highways, these enraptured Dallas residents above Dealey Plaza underscore an infamous part of the city’s history: the JFK assassination. Earley parallels the shock and fear of this historical event with the angst-ridden mundanity of postwar American life that was so prevalent for the Baby Boomer generation. The angst, melded into departures and closures, endings and beginnings, is met in equal part by Sean Earley’s uncanny sense of humor and playfulness. A vibrant, orderly Dallas is pulled at by its threads with a certain absurdity—as seen in a woman crashing through the ceiling of a building, the petrified and expressionless ascension of each person, and even the vibrant retrofuturistic cars—preluding a future not too far from the painting’s creation in 1982. Earley depicts the everyday fears of American life—and Dallas life, in particular—in a melting pot of emotions from all corners of suburbia using an unseen higher hand, and, to some extent, he plays God as he whisks his subjects upward across the wooden panel. 

Julia Garrett is the 2023–2024 McDermott Intern for Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art

Image: Sean Earley, The Rapture, 1982. Oil on wood, 49 3/4 × 49 1/4 × 1 1/2 in. (126.37 × 125.1 × 3.81 cm), Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Paul Bridgewater, 2022.90.5. © Estate of Sean Earley.

Installation of Nishiki Sugawara-Beda’s “KuroKuroShiro Kami – Four Seasons”

Installing a new display in our Japan galleries with Nishiki Sugawara-Beda and the DMA team!

Nishiki Sugawara-Beda is a Japanese-American artist based locally in Dallas, Texas. Her works draw upon her Japanese heritage, and often employ traditional Japanese mediums, including custom-made sumi ink. Her KuroKuroShiro (black-black-white) series explores the medium of sumi ink, reflecting on the mark-making of classical Japanese ink painting and calligraphy, while also incorporating modern approaches to figure and ground as well as the gestural brushstroke. 

“Materially and conceptually, these works are a reflection on the kakejiku (hanging scroll) format. I understand the traditional rules of kakejiku ink paintings, and from there I borrow or adapt those traditions. While the format is that of a hanging scroll, I also change aspects of that format, such as the length of the top and bottom fabric, while maintaining the proportions. That, and the paintings themselves also borrow elements, or traditions, from Western abstraction. Finally, there is the addition of the red hanging fortunes. These accessories are my way of completing the works and looking towards the future.” 

“As an artist, you must think about how your work will be interpreted over time. Your work lives beyond yourself, and you must think about those future responsibilities.” 

See Sugawara-Beda’s work on view now in our Asian art galleries on Level 3! 

Images: Nishiki Sugawara-Beda, KuroKuroShiro Kami – Four Seasons, 2021. Sumi ink on paper mounted to fabric scroll. Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas Art Fair Foundation Acquisition Fund, 2023.49.1-4.A-B 

Installation of Ja’Tovia Gary’s “In my mother’s house there are many many…”

As we approach the final weeks of Concentrations 64: Ja’Tovia Gary, I KNOW IT WAS THE BLOOD, I thought I would look back on the process of bringing this exhibition together. Specifically, I’ll walk you through the discussions, installation, and maintenance of In my mother’s house there are many many…, the DMA’s commissioned work from Gary.

In March 2022, Dr. Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, proposed that the DMA commission and acquire an artwork from Ja’Tovia Gary. Brodbeck and the Contemporary Curatorial Team had been working with Gary on a solo exhibition of her artwork at the DMA as part of our Concentrations series (which focuses on emerging artists), originally proposed by former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator Vivian Crockett. During these discussions, Gary mentioned a new idea for a project she was interested in designing. The work was modeled after an armillary sphere and would have three metal rings surrounding a large, rotating sphere covered in cotton. A short film composed of excerpts from her upcoming feature-length production would be projected onto the sphere. As part of the DMA’s initiative to be a leader in contemporary art, this proposal provided us with the opportunity to partner with an emerging star in the contemporary art world on a large scale and with exciting new work.

The acquisition of In my mother’s house there are many many… was approved in May 2022, and Gary and the DMA team began to work in earnest on the development of the exhibition and fabrication of the new artwork. The artist partnered with Independent Casting in Philadelphia to construct the armillary sphere. The artwork was new for both Gary and Independent Casting, so it was vital that plenty of time was allocated not just for construction but for hundreds of hours of testing. By April 2023, In my mother’s house there are many many… was ready and shipped to the DMA for installation.

Part of my job as the Associate Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions is to oversee and document the first installation of newly acquired artworks that are considered complex. I take copious notes and hundreds of photographs, and I make sure to document the installation process thoroughly and in a way that will allow for easier installations in the future. As this was the first time In my mother’s house there are many many… was being assembled at the DMA, it was vital that I take good notes in order to write reliable installation instructions.

We were assisted during installation by Jonathan Maley, one of the fabricators from Independent Casting. Together, the team installed the piece as shown in the following photographs. Our Senior Manager for Gallery Technology, Lance Lander, worked with Carlin Belkowski of Sensory Innovations on the projectors and the video. They digitally moved the pixels and contoured the projection to precisely fit the sphere using a technique called pixel-mapping.

And, just like that, In my mother’s house there are many many… is up and running!

While it is always the hope that everything runs smoothly once an installation is completed, our team must always be ready to jump in to problem solve if there is an issue. This is especially true of artworks that have motors and moving parts. Since the installation, we encountered a few issues that have required attention. The most significant of these was when the center ring became disengaged from the motor and would no longer turn. Addressing this required much consultation with Gary and the team from Independent Casting, and ultimately required that staff from Independent Casting come out to address the problem. In the end, we got the artwork back up and running, and the DMA team now has a better understanding of how to care for and maintain it.

Working with contemporary art is fun but not without its challenges. Installing a 19th-century painting is certainly more straightforward than installing a newly conceptualized interpretation of an armillary sphere with a video projected onto it! But the fact that the DMA is willing and eager to engage with, cultivate, promote, and support new and innovative artists is part of what makes our institution so special.

Katie Province is the Associate Registrar for Collections and Exhibitions at the DMA.

Made to Be Seen: Kwak and Porras-Kim’s Objects of Pleasure

Objects of Pleasure is the type of artwork that immediately commands the viewer’s attention. Each large-scale panel reflects an almost mirror image of the other, represented in completely different textures and materials, and invites the viewer to observe the work from up close and pay closer attention to the objects displayed on the painted shelves. 

Objects of Pleasure emerged from an informal conversation between two artist friends—or “sisters” as they call each other—Gala Porras-Kim and Young Joon Kwak, when they asked themselves, “what would pleasure look like for my sister?” Intrinsically tied to their friendship and sisterhood, the artists painted their respective panels of this remarkable diptych as a gift to one another, saying that the most exciting aspect of the artistic process was collaborating for the first time. “I don’t think these works can exist individually,” said Porras-Kim, speaking of how the panels only make sense when they are next to each other. “When I look at [my] panel alone, I don’t recognize it as mine.” Although Kwak’s artistic practice is grounded in collaboration, this artwork is Porras-Kim’s first-ever collaborative work; however, she says this new endeavor felt less daunting because she was able to share the artistic process with Kwak. The artists continually express their excitement about the opportunity to work with each other, above all else, and how each panel reflects their longtime friendship and individual character. “The end result is very representative of our personalities,” they say. 

Gala Porras-Kim and Young Joon Kwak, Objects of Pleasure, 2022. Color pencil and Flashe paint on paper, mahogany frame; Flashe paint, glitter, and acrylic on paper, mahogany frame, 60.75 x 48.75 x 2.25 in (154 x 124 x 6 cm) each; overall: 60.75 x 98 x 2.25 in. © Commonwealth and Council

As a recent acquisition by the DMA’s Postwar and Contemporary Art Department, this work may also become a conversation-starter among visitors, with the left panel depicting historical sex objects, while the right panel portrays the silhouettes of their contemporary counterparts. Objects of Pleasure homages and simultaneously queers traditions of decorative display, from the 17th- to 18th-century European kunstkammer of sensuous surfaces, to the 18th- to early 20th-century Korean screen painting genre chaekgeori, which presents scholarly or refined objects on similarly elaborately constructed bookshelves. In the left panel, Porras-Kim carefully captures every detail of sex objects from all over the world, sourced from various internet websites, and then flattens them into a two-dimensional cabinet of curiosities. In the right panel, Kwak responds to and queers Porras-Kim’s drawing by rendering the modern versions of these historical sex objects in iridescent silhouettes against a pink textured background. Her formal abstraction of the objects and use of glitter as a reflective, shifting “queer material,” as she describes it, deliberately plays with viewers’ assumptions, and asks them to first engage with the work from an aesthetic perspective before allowing for a more inclusive and open-ended dialogue between the work and viewer. 

Rather than immediately alienating the viewer, Kwak wanted the viewer to have a delayed response to the painting. When developing their panel, the artist entertained the humorous and subversive idea of “luring in [viewers] with the pink glitter,” including those who might typically run away from a work with such an overtly sexual theme, and then slowly having the viewer realize they are encountering sex objects. Instead of instantly recognizing the sexually “taboo” subject matter and averting their gaze, viewers are compelled to approach the work more closely before assigning judgment. “Ultimately, I want to make people become better viewers,” Kwak says. 

Gala Porras-Kim (born 1984, Bogota, Colombia) is an LA-based Korean-Colombian artist whose most notable work to date, her Index series, explores how cultural artifacts become recontextualized, classified, and acquire meaning within art museums and institutions.  

Young Joon Kwak (born 1984, Queens, New York) is an LA-based multidisciplinary artist and educator and trans Korean-American whose work spans sculpture, performance, music, video, and community-based collaborations to establish new forms and spaces for the LGBTQ+ community. 

Andrea Dávila is the 2022–2023 McDermott Intern for Contemporary Art at the Dallas Museum of Art. 

“Talk of the Town: A Dallas Museum of Art Pop-Up Exhibition Featuring Artworks from the Dallas Art Fair”

Talk of the Town is a collaborative exhibition between NorthPark, the Dallas Art Fair, and the Dallas Museum of Art to showcase works that the DMA was able to acquire through funds made available by the Dallas Art Fair Foundation to purchase works for the Museum at the fair. This program will celebrate its seventh year in April, and the DMA has brought 46 amazing works into the collection to date. I have been lucky to participate in six of the seven years, so curating this exhibition was a very personal exercise for me. It gave me the opportunity to reflect on the unique opportunities of this type of exhibition program, which allows us a more immediate responsiveness to unfolding trends in contemporary art, as well as the ability to react in real time to that magical first encounter with a work of art.

Museums are necessarily very deliberative when making acquisitions—the vast majority of works that come into the collection stay with us in perpetuity, so often the acquisition process takes months if not years. We have a much shorter runway in making final decisions for works that come into the collection from the Dallas Art Fair. The curatorial team researches the participating galleries and their rosters in advance of the fair to make a shortlist of artists that would find good context in the Museum’s collection—an essential criterion for museum acquisition. But in the end, the final decisions are made by committee, in the course of a day, after immersion in the fair’s presentation and a lively debate. As such, we can decide, together in collective wisdom, to make a vote of confidence—and even take a risk—on works in a different way than the standard museum procedure allows. The results speak for themselves. For example, in February we closed our retrospective of the late Matthew Wong, who saw a meteoric rise in his career in the past few years. The DMA was the only museum to acquire Wong’s work in his lifetime, at the Dallas Art Fair in 2017. The DAFF Museum Acquisition Fund thus allowed us to take a chance, and, in turn, become trailblazers.

When I was thinking about how best to highlight the work that we’ve done, while also responding to the exhibition site—NorthPark—I had the idea to showcase the depiction of and by women by the diverse group of artists we have acquired at the fair. Malls are traditionally seen as feminine spaces—spaces to browse, buy, and, especially, socialize. Feminine spaces are often derided as unserious and trite; however, the works in this show present a picture of women that highlights strength, independence, generosity of spirit, reflection, and play. I had originally titled the show Breadwinners, after a stunning Summer Wheat work bought in 2017, but I changed course when it was pointed out that there is a cafe of the same name below. I loved the original title, and the imagery of that work, because it depicted women as providers, as opposed to passive recipients, blowing through their husband’s or father’s money carelessly shopping. Talk of the Town became the new title, after the daring portrait of a Black woman smoking, defiantly meeting the gaze of the viewer, in Danielle Mckinney’s small but mighty portrait of the same name. Even better, I thought. Not only did this new title point to our cross-city collaboration (and may I add, the core team working on this show between all three partners consisted of all women), but it also allowed for a vision of feminized, social spaces as sites for articulation: to define the self amidst community, in all the powerful and beautiful and wise ways we show up as women.

Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck is the Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the DMA.

Nature and the Machine: Biocentrism in El Lissitzky’s Kestner Proun

The early 20th century was a time of accelerated transformation across fields, not unlike the present, and many viewed it as a time of new beginnings, not just politically but in technology, science, and the arts. Tumultuous change occurred with the rapid industrialization and mechanization of labor affecting, in turn, economics, science, and culture. This change also caused a growing philosophical division between nature and the machine to materialize; however, many artists, including Russian avant-garde artist El Lissitzky, saw an intrinsic connection between the two.

Image 1. El Lissitzky (1890–1941), Dessau, 1930/1932. Josef Albers. Gelatin silver prints mounted to board. Museum of Modern Art, New York.  

El Lissitzky (1890–1941) is one of the most influential and experimental Russian avant-garde artists of the early 20th century. His work as a designer, architect, photographer, and typographer explored the wider implications of the utility of art in everyday life. Within his extensive canon, Lissitzky’s most well known work is his Proun series, produced between 1919 and 1926. “Proun,” a term he invented that stands for the “project for the affirmation of the new,” is an amalgamation of visual elements from Suprematism, Constructivism, Futurism, and Cubism. An untiled plate from a collection of lithographs titled The First Kestner Portfolio (1923) [Image 2] is an example of this series and is currently on view in the DMA’s exhibition Movement: The Legacy of Kineticism. Abstract geometric forms weightlessly float within an altered perception of reality. Within the white space of infinity, a skeletal-like figure made up of crossed diagonals is strikingly architectural. Lissitzky’s work is often composed of a few neutral colors, reflecting a dynamic tension between two- and three-dimensional forms within the same space. Lissitzky viewed the Prouns as “the interchange station between painting and architecture,” which “goes beyond painting and the artists on the one hand and machine and the engineer on the other, and advances to the construction of space . . . [creating] a new, many faceted unity.”1 These works force the viewer to question their perception of reality, space, and time by processing multiple perspectives simultaneously.

Image 2. First Kestner Portfolio Proun, 1923. El Lissitzky. Color lithograph. Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Mrs. James H. Clark, 1991.359.8.FA. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

In 1923 there was a distinct change in the non-objective painting practices of Lissitzky, the result of which can be seen in another untitled lithograph within the Kestner Portfolio (1923) [Image 3]. Embracing the technological advancements of industrial mechanization, artists explored the connection between nature and the machine, and the possibilities of art within this relation. Lissitzky explored newfound ideas wherein nature and technology were interconnected, and the dialogue between the mechanical and organic is present in the Kestner Proun’s elemental form.

Image 3. Kestnermappe Proun. The First Kestner Portfolio, 1923. El Lissitzky. Color lithograph. Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Mrs. James H. Clark, 1991.359.6.FA. © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. 

Lissitzky described the Kestner Proun as a “Schwingungskorper,” or oscillating body emphasizing its dynamic functionality. To create the illusion of movement within the Kestner Proun, Lissitzky distilled implied movement via a subtle use of diagonal lines, the layering of transparent elements, repetition of form, and organic spheres. Though simple in its building blocks, the components are interacting on a holistic level. This complex system reverberates a kinetic energy as Lissitzky captures a frozen temporal moment.

Lissitzky’s desire to construct forms through systems that are both mechanical and organic was inspired by the groundbreaking work of Austro-Hungarian microbiologist and popular science writer Raoul Heinrich Francé. Francé coined the word biotechnic, defining it as “the study of living and life-like systems, with the goal of discovering new principles, techniques and processes to be applied to man-made technology.”2 This methodology would later be called bionics. By the mid-1920s, scientists and laypeople alike read Francé’s writings on plants and soil microbiology, incorporating biocentrism into their own work. In addition to Lissitzky, Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Laszlo Maholy-Nagy, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe also read Francé. Lissitzky’s letters reveal he contacted Francé in spring 1924, writing, “Thank you for Francé’s address. I will write to him when Nasci is ready and when I have read Bios [Francé’s book].”3[Image 4]

Image 4. El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters. Nasci. Mertz 8/9, April–July 1924, 1 vol.:ill.,:31 cm. Redaktion des Merzverlages, Kurt Schwitters. Hannover. Digitally accessed 2022. Yale University Library digital collection.  

Directly influenced by Francé, Lissitzky denounced the machine in the summer 1924 publication of Nasci in the journal Mertz, which he co-edited with Dada artist Kurt Schwitters. The word nasci translates to “nature.” Lissitzky energetically argued in Nasci against claims that the machine had surpassed nature, suggesting by contrast that the machine was, in essence, nature itself because natural organisms, namely humans, made them. [Image 5] To prove this, Lissitzky curated a portfolio of new artworks that reflect Francé’s form-making philosophy, including his own Kestnermappe Proun (1923).

Image 5. El Lissitzky, Kurt Schwitters. Nasci. Mer 8/9, April–July 1924, 1 vol.:ill.,:31 cm. Redaktion des Merzverlages, Kurt Schwitters, Hannover. Digitally accessed 2022. Yale University Library digital collection.  

This clear declaration of the Kestner Proun as an example of biotechnical art strengthens the connection between Lissitzky’s bio-constructivist art with Francé’s concept of biotechnik. The elements within Kestner Proun, though simple in its building blocks, are interacting on a complex yet holistic level as they dynamically cross the white space of infinity. Creating a fully connected bio-mechanical system. The Proun now reflected a “frozen instantaneous picture of process, thus a work is a stopping-place on the road of becoming and not the fixed goal.”4 Lissitzky reconceptualized the creative process as an artistic machine reflecting nature as self-generating, embodying the evolutionary forces that proliferate organic forms. Here Lissitzky merges art, science, and design to create the unique collectivity that is biocentrism.

[1] Lissitzky-Küppers, Sophie. El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts. Thames and Hudson Ltd, London. 1968, 347. 

[2] Roth, Rene Romain. Raoul H. Francé and the Doctrine of Life. AuthorHouse, 2000.  

[3]Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 47.  

[4] Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky: Life, Letters, Texts, 351.

Ashley McKinney is the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History Research Assistant for Indigenous American Art at the DMA

Past, Present, Future: Ha Ilè Honors Indigenous Art 

Artists Casey Koyczan and Eric Wagliardo each learned about rock art as many of us do—as a child or young adult in school, or out of an abundance of curiosity about the past, archaeology, or ancient art. But Koyczan, a Dene interdisciplinary artist from Yellowknife, Canada, says, “[I]t wasn’t until adulthood that I was able to experience them in person and fully realize their importance and spiritual meaning.” Also called petroglyphs (etched or pecked images) or pictographs (painted images), rock art has been created for thousands of years by people around the globe, from Australia to South Africa to Europe. Take, for example, the famous cave paintings at Lascaux and Chauvet, France, which include stunning depictions of horses, mammoths, bulls, and handprints. These are approximately 22,000 and 36,000 years old, respectively. Globally, the representations of humans, living and extinct animals, mythical beings, and abstract images portrayed in rock art can be an important part of the spiritual inheritance and identities of contemporary Indigenous peoples. 

Across North America, notable rock art sites were produced by ancestral Indigenous inhabitants at locations like Jeffers Petroglyphs in Minnesota (8,000 images in one place!); Newspaper Rock, Canyonlands National Park, Utah; and Petroglyphs Provincial Park, Vancouver Island, Canada. However, while researching this project, Texas-based artist Wagliardo was surprised to learn that petroglyphs and pictographs exist right here in Texas—a fact that might astonish many Texans. Pictographs at Hueco Tanks State Park east of El Paso and Seminole Canyon State Park near Comstock are among the most well known sites in the Lone Star State.  

Overlaid digital rendering on an image of the 4,000-year-old White Shaman Mural in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas, thanks to Jessica Lee Hamlin, Executive Director of Shumla, and her colleagues. Credit: Courtesy Jessica Lee Hamlin. 
Close up of a petroglyph at Hueco Tanks State Historic Site near El Paso, Texas. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, photograph by Carol M. Highsmith [LC-DIG-highsm-27441]. 

Ha Ilè (pronounced ha-ee-lay) is an augmented reality (AR) rock art installation created by Koyczan and Wagliardo. AR allows semi-realistic experiences of an object or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way. By scanning a QR code, DMA visitors can take part in a unique Ha Ilè experience at two building entrances—pictographs on rock at the Ross Avenue entrance, and a charismatic hummingbird at the entrance adjacent to Klyde Warren Park. Ha Ilè can also be experienced at other locations, including the AT&T Discovery District.  

Ellie Canning, McDermott Intern for Latin American Art, interacts with Ha Ilè Onyx at the DMA’s Ross Avenue Entrance. 

Representing one of the world’s oldest art forms using cutting-edge technology is an innovative approach—Koyczan and Wagliardo generated the rock forms through 3D scanning and produced the pictographs through artificial intelligence (AI) to portray rock art from North America and across the world; and, finally, the hummingbird is a computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image. Hummingbird motifs have been depicted throughout time across the Americas; Koyczan and Wagliardo discovered while working on Ha Ilè that they both cherish the beautiful and sometimes fierce migratory bird.  

Larger than life, the Ha Ilè hummingbird hovers near Curatorial Assistant Alicia Sandoval. 

Ha Ilè means future and past tense in the Dene language. Koyczan proposes that this work has the potential to exist for as long as the petroglyphs and pictographs that inspired it, and he feels “it relates heavily to Indigenous Futurisms and how humanity will view and experience artwork in the future.” Indigenous Futurisms is defined as a movement consisting of art, literature, and other media that express Indigenous perspectives of the future, past, and present, typically in the context of science fiction. Expressing a similar sentiment, Wagliardo is hopeful that “these pieces help people reconnect with the past and imagine an optimistic future where we as a society connect in a deeper, more meaningful way.”  

Individuals pictured (left to right): Eric Wagliardo, artist (USA) Casey Koyczan, artist (Canada), and Noëlla De Maina, Consul, Consulate General of Canada in Dallas at the Ha Ilè Launch Reception in honor of Native American Heritage Month in the AT&T Discovery District Media Lobby. Photo by Albert Y. from Ellum Studios. Courtesy of the Consulate General of Canada in Dallas, TX. 

Ha Ilè is on view at the DMA through January 31, 2023. To learn more about Texas rock art, please visit the Shumla Archaeological Research & Education Center https://shumla.org/ or the Texas State Historical Association https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/indian-rock-art

Ha Ile is courtesy of the Government of Canada; the Consulate General of Canada, Dallas; the City of Dallas, Office of Arts and Culture; and the Dallas Museum of Art. The Dallas Museum of Art is supported, in part, by the generosity of DMA Members and donors, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission on the Arts, and the citizens of Dallas through the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture.  

Dr. Michelle Rich is The Ellen and Harry S. Parker III Assistant Curator of Indigenous American Art at the DMA.

A Conversation with Rashid Johnson  

Pictured Left to Right: Artist Rashid Johnson; Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art; Dr. Agustín Arteaga, The Eugene McDermott Director

Rashid Johnson, this year’s TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art 2022 honoree and renowned multidisciplinary artist, gifted the DMA with his multimedia work, The New Black Yoga Installation. Featuring five men performing an enigmatic dance of ballet, yoga, tai chi and martial arts across a sun-soaked beach, the work explores the complexity of personal and cultural identity. Johnson’s ongoing meditations on black masculinity and mysticism are reflected through their choreographed dance movements. Rugs branded with crosshairs, a symbol that is etched into the sand in the video, are situated throughout the gallery, projecting the film’s combined sense of peace and foreboding into physical space.  

Below is an excerpt from a transcript of a conversation between Rashid Johnson and the DMA’s Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art, Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, at The Warehouse in Dallas, Texas. This dialogue has been edited for length and clarity. 

Katherine: 

When I saw you yesterday at the Museum, you were saying it’s been probably eight or nine years since you’ve really interacted with the piece and seen it in person. I’m so happy to have this work on view and to discuss it with you for the first time because it’s a very layered and enigmatic work. Perhaps you could speak a little bit on how this work came about in your practice. 

Rashid: 

This film, The New Black Yoga, was born of a time when I was living with my wife, Sheree, in Berlin. And it was the first time I was living internationally. I was working on an exhibition and doing a residency. But, as anyone who’s familiar with my work knows about me, I’m an anxious person. And I was asking myself, how do I start to deal with this anxiety? My doctor said I should go do yoga. Since I was in Germany, all the yoga classes were in German. Apparently, that’s just how it works, right? [Laughs] I thought I would just follow what the other people did. 

And, apparently, that’s just not how a real yoga practice is formed [laughs]. And so, because of that my sense is to do something absurd and continue to follow a path. I found a male performer and made a film, and I called it Black Yoga. Now, this man knew nothing about yoga—I, too, knew nothing about yoga [laughs]—but he was interested in ballet. I had an 8mm camera and I said, “Let’s do it, let’s make up black yoga.” I just started giving him moves to do and we made this film called Black Yoga. And by expanding on that was born this film, which is executed using five characters called The New Black Yoga and shot on 16mm film. 

It’s this fun way to kind of revisit this idea of healing, or the creation of healing, using your own creative sensibility to invent a way to navigate complicated circumstances. And that’s how this film was born. That’s its origin story.  

Katherine: 

Thank you for that. I want to talk a little bit about the healing aspect of the piece. The installation that we have at the DMA has a series of branded rugs on the floor. Then you look at the film—it is a very serene film of beautiful movement on a beautiful beach at dusk—and there also appears to be crosshairs that are written into the sand. Then you notice that there are enigmatic runes that give a sense of mysticism but also of foreboding because it does appear that there are these crosshairs in the rugs. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the kind of symbolism that you’re dealing with.  

Rashid: 

You know, throughout my practice I’ve built an iconography, or a series of symbols and signs, that reference either personal or collective experience—for example, the rugs through branding, but also on the beach, a kind of simple technique of drawing in the sand. And one that you mentioned, Katherine, is the crosshairs.  

I’m a child of the eighties. The day before yesterday, I went to see a play by an incredible playwright and screenwriter named Susan Laurie Parks—she happened to also write the script for a film that I made. But I was sitting behind Spike Lee. I love Spike Lee. I’m just a huge, huge fan of Spike Lee. 

I have to say that, early on, I was quite obsessed with his films. One of his early films is a film many of you have probably seen called Do the Right Thing. I was quite young when it came out. But, there’s a song in it by a band called Public Enemy, and the song is called Fight the Power. I fell in love with Public Enemy. I thought that they were so brilliant. It was this radical discourse but it was also urban music and it was philosophy. Chuck D, who was the lead singer for the band, was this activist and this really brilliant character. On the cover of their albums, they often had this kind of crosshair—a gun sight. I remember asking myself over the course of looking at that album, listening to the music, and seeing how they employed the symbol—who was that sight for? Was the gun being pointed at them? Were they in the crosshairs or were they projecting the crosshairs onto whoever they were battling against? I’ve borrowed this symbol a lot in my work through branding. 

Of course, Katherine, you mentioned there’s several rugs that lay on the floor. Well, my wife is Iranian and I always joke that my mother-in-law and I don’t have a ton in common. But she likes Persian rugs and I like Persian rugs. So I started using these things in my work—almost as a way of reflecting on this relationship that I was building with her, and these cultural signifiers and the possibility that cultural encampment, instincts, and signifiers can become global and employed in different ways and borrowed, sanctioned, and given agency in different languages. So I coated the floor in these Persian rugs and then I branded them with different symbols. I’m excited about how they become both legible and potentially mysterious, simultaneously.  

Focus On: Rashid Johnson 

The Dallas Museum of Art invites visitors to step into the artwork of renowned multidisciplinary artist Rashid Johnson in Focus On: Rashid Johnson, an installation showcasing Johnson’s multimedia work The New Black Yoga Installation. Gifted to the DMA by the artist in 2022, this installation combines a video projection and branded Persian rugs to create an experience that is, at once, intense and intimate. The film features five men performing an enigmatic dance of ballet, yoga, tai chi, and martial arts across a sun-soaked beach, exploring the complexity of personal and cultural identity. Their choreographed movements reflect Johnson’s ongoing meditations on Black masculinity and mysticism, as well as his investigations of the body in space. Rugs branded with crosshairs, a symbol that is etched into the sand in the video, are situated throughout the gallery, projecting the film’s combined sense of peace and foreboding into physical space. 

About Rashid Johnson 

Rashid Johnson’s practice encompasses a wide range of media, including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation. Via a rich visual lexicon of coded symbolism and autobiographical materials, Johnson’s artwork conducts searing meditations on race and class, in addition to examining individual and shared cultural identities. The artist, who was born in Chicago in 1977, is perhaps best known for translating cultural experiences, most commonly that of Black Americans, through his unique visual language. Johnson was recognized as the 2022 honoree for his contributions to contemporary art at the 2022 TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Gala and Auction, a charity auction that benefits both the DMA and amfAR, the Foundation for AIDS Research. 

Edited by Trey Burns, Multimedia Producer, and Ellee McMeans, Communications Manager  

Photos Trey Burns, Multimedia Producer

Under the Influence: What Inspired Picasso 

Pablo Picasso’s first financial success came in spring 1906, when he sold the entire inventory of his studio to art dealer Ambroise Vollard for the then large sum of 2,000 francs. This allowed him and his partner, Fernande Olivier, to travel to Barcelona and from there to the Pyrenean village of Gósol. In Spain, Picasso was a different person, Olivier remembered: “[A]s soon as he returned to his native Spain, and especially to its countryside, he was perfused with its calm and serenity. This made his works lighter, airier, less agonized.”1 It is not surprising then that in the almost three months the couple spent in Gósol, Picasso produced more than 300 paintings, drawings, and sculptures with Olivier as his main model. A significant change in his style announced itself during these months, influenced in part by the spare landscape and the region’s unique colors, but also by two exhibitions he had recently seen: the Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres retrospective at the 1905 Salon d’Automne, and a display of Iberian art at the Louvre from recent excavations in Andalusia. 

Picasso, Nude with Folded Hands, 1906. Gouache on paper, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., bequest of Mrs. Eugene McDermott, 2019.67.19.McD
Picasso, Head of a Woman, Modeled 1905–1906, cast 1960. Bronze, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., bequest of Mrs. Eugene McDermott, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 2019.67.18.McD

A diamond pattern and the contours of a figure bleed through the thin paint of the pale pink background in Nude with Folded Hands. Only Olivier’s own ocher outlines set her apart from the nondescript, empty environment in which she is standing, giving the painting the effect of a bas-relief. Her voluptuous body seems awkwardly twisted at the waist and shoulders, her head is slightly bent down, and her almond-shaped eyes are closed. In its rigidity, the face evokes Iberian art, as well as a sculpture bust of Olivier, Head of a Woman, that Picasso made in the same year. Standing in front of her beholder, she is timidly folding her hands below her pudenda; however, her modesty is a false one, her hands revealing more than they hide, guiding the viewers gaze. Olivier often posed in the nude for Picasso, and while the young artist frequently made small drawings and caricatures of his sexual escapades, the studies and paintings of Olivier from 1906 stand out through their intimate eroticism, absent in his earlier works and in the following years. 

Picasso, Bust, 1907–1908. Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection, gift of Joshua L. Logan, Loula D. Lasker, Ruth and Nathan Cummings Art Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. Edward S. Marcus, Sarah Dorsey Hudson, Mrs. Alfred L. Bromberg, Henry Jacobus and an anonymous donor, by exchange, © Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, 1987.399.FA
Yaure peoples, Je face mask, c. 1930-1952. Wood and pigment, Dallas Museum of Art, The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art, 2018.7.McD

Bust, probably painted in the winter of 1907–08, looks fundamentally different from Nude with Folded Hands, and much had happened in the meantime. In spring or summer 1907, Picasso visited the Indigenous art and culture collection at the Musée du Trocadéro in Paris, which, though dusty and deserted, opened his eyes to a new influence: art from outside the Western canon, originating from European colonies in Africa and Oceania, leading him to finish his monumental painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907, MoMA). Finally, at the Salon d’Automne, he saw the retrospective dedicated to Paul Cézanne. These exhibitions greatly influenced Picasso’s artistic development and his quest for an escape from the confines of illusionistic art, established during the Renaissance. Picasso further explored the pictorial means of simplification, thus the muscular woman in Bust, lifting her arms above her head, pulling her hair into a bun, is reduced to outlines and shading that was achieved through isolated application of color and expressive brushstrokes, rather than through the traditional method of gradients from white to black. Her face, devoid of emotion, echoes the masks Picasso saw at the Trocadéro, which might have looked like the Je face mask from the Yaure peoples. The fragmented body is reduced to basic geometric shapes, with the contours opening so that the background and the foreground merged, as Picasso had observed in Cézanne’s work.  

Paul Cézanne, The Rooftops, About 1898. Oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art,
The Eugene and Margaret McDermott Art Fund, Inc., bequest of Mrs. Eugene McDermott, 2019.67.6.McD

Despite being celebrated as an inventor, Picasso never worked in an artistic vacuum. Trying to find a new language from 1906 onward, he was especially receptive to influences from outside the traditional Western canon, which makes these works compelling, even for the present-day beholder.  

[1] Fernande Olivier, Picasso und seine Freunde. Erinnerungen aus den Jahren 1905-1913, 1989, p. X. Translated from German by the author. 

Christine Burger, Curatorial Research Assistant for European Art 


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