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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.

Uncrating the sphere.
Placing the base.
Lowering the central shaft into the base. Mr. Maley had to thread the power cord down through the base as it was lowered into place.
Sphere is in position to be lowered onto base.
Mr. Maley attaches the wiring from the sphere to the wiring of the base.
Installing the middle ring and the start of pixel-mapping the video.
Third ring is lowered into place.
Motor gears are positioned between the gears at the base of the shaft. This is what makes the rings rotate.
Ja’Tovia Gary adds more cotton to the sphere.
The base covers are added. Almost finished!
Last step! Adding the mirror covers.

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

Published June 5, 2023 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , works of art Closed
Tags: Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, New acquisition, Postwar

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”

Published March 22, 2023 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , works of art Closed
Tags: Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art

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

Published March 8, 2023 Contemporary Art Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, Lissitzky, movement, Supremitism

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

A Conversation with Rashid Johnson

Published November 8, 2022 Contemporary Art , Exhibitions Closed
Tags: Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art

*^{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

Behind the Scenes: Installing Senga Nengudi’s “Water Composition I”

Published March 22, 2022 Behind-the-Scenes , Conservation , Contemporary Art , Exhibitions , Staff , works of art Closed
Tags: Art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

Influenced by Black cultural traditions and Japanese Gutai, artist Senga Nengudi’s work synthesizes multiple ideas circulating in the 1960s and 1970s: feminist practice, the role of materiality, and the relationship between activation, viewership, and performance. In her sculpture Water Composition I, currently on view in Slip Zone, Nengudi encloses colored water in plastic, creating a body-like form.

_{Senga Nengudi, Water Composition I, 1969-1970/2019, heat-sealed vinyl and colored water, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund}

We asked Senior Preparator and IPM Coordinator Mary Nicolett what stood out to her about her experience installing this abstract work. Here’s what she had to say:

First priority upon being approached to work with Fran Baas, Interim Chief Conservator, on the Nengudi was sourcing two 2-gallon jugs for filling the piece.

Once that had been done, we set about opening the contents of the packing tube. There I found a beautiful rope, tubing and funnels, pre-filled dye containers with pre-measured amounts, and of course the plastic “bags.” Also included, and very important, was the template for placement! We were able to figure out exactly where on the platform the piece would go, and it detailed the exact pinpointed location of each PVC bag including position of the heat-sealed-seam.

It took a while to truly understand the tubing and funnel system. What I wasn’t prepared for was how exquisitely this PVC bags where packed, in order of installation, one by one. Preparators often wish for things to be packed better, but this was a thing of beauty!

Fran and I set about the morning hooking the tubes into each bag and filling with the prescribed amount of dye mixed with the prescribed ionized distilled water. It was “slow and steady wins the race” and we did not spill a drop! Each funnel was marked with tape on the wall, as to which bag the tube went to, just to avoid any possible confusion.

After all the bags were filled, Fran and I began removing bubbles in the bags by gently thumping each bag until the bubbles moved to the top.

A bit of tape removal, sweeping, touch-up paint, and we were done! And it looks marvelous!

Come see this work for yourself in the free exhibition Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia, on view now through July 10, 2022.

Mary Nicolett is the Senior Preparator and IPM Coordinator at the DMA.

Stretching Ed Clark’s “Intarsia”

Published February 7, 2022 Behind-the-Scenes , Conservation , Contemporary Art , Staff , works of art Closed

Ed Clark is an American abstract expressionist and pivotal Black artist in the DMA’s collection who experimented with shaped canvases. His large-scale painting Intarsia is on view for free in the exhibition Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia. To create this work, he laid raw canvas on the floor, poured acrylic paint directly on the surface, and spread it across the canvas with a push broom in a performative process. The title of this painting refers to a knitting and metalworking technique used to create fields of different colors that appear to blend in and out of one another. Combined with the elliptical shape of the canvas, which Clark saw as evocative of the shape of an eye, the radiant colors give the overwhelming sense of an expanding, pulsating image. Find out how our team of art conservators and preparators worked to preserve this work’s thick layers of paint by stretching the canvas before displaying it.

From Laura Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA:

It was a true team effort—the painting measures over 5 meters by 3.5 meters, and weighs over 200 pounds! This painting is unique in that the artist has applied so many layers of paint that the paint is in fact thicker than the canvas, which changes the entire physics of the work. It has also traditionally been shown pinned directly to the wall, which was possible in 1970 when it was painted, but now the work has aged and needs a new approach to ensure longevity.

We worked directly with a stretcher maker in New York to design a stretcher that would hold the weight of the piece while remaining thin, giving the appearance that the work is pinned to the wall.

I worked with our preparators to create edge extensions, or a strip lining, and attach these to the back of the work to be able to stretch it while retaining the illusion of pinning. We first stretched a loose lining, which is a giant piece of canvas that acts as an additional support, and then carefully stretched the work onto the prepared stretcher, slowly increasing tension over several days to allow the paint to relax and release into a comfortable position. The work is now secure for the long haul, while retaining the artist’s original intention.

It took a lot of hands but we got it done! It takes at least 8 people to safely move the work, so all hands were on deck for this one!

A Change of Scenery for Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Sam F”

Published October 11, 2021 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , works of art Closed
Tags: Basquiat, Dallas, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA, Jean-Michel Basquiat

_{Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sam F, 1985, oil on door, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Samuel N. and Helga A. Feldman, 2019.31, © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York}

In 2017 we began conversations with Helga Feldman about a landmark gift to the institution of a work by the incomparably important US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. The portrait, Sam F, painted right here in Dallas, is of Feldman’s late husband, who wanted the work to be given to his city’s museum to be enjoyed by the public. As was the wish of the Feldmans, the work entered the collection at the time of Mrs. Feldman’s death in spring 2021. Basquiat’s significance to the recent history of art is almost unparalleled, and when we received the painting, we got to work making immediate plans to get it on view. With this in mind, we adapted to certain considerations of time and space in order to share the work with our audiences without delay. Therefore, we decided to show it in our Concourse, which is the most public of the Museum spaces, and is traversed by all visitors to the DMA. We have often shown works in that space that we want to honor—the Basquiat hangs where the honored artist of our major annual fundraiser, TWO X TWO for AIDS and Art, is typically found. However, because of the very public nature of this space, our duties to care for the collection mandate that the work must be hung above visitor touch distance—an average viewer’s arm span—to keep the work safe. When Sam F went on view, we received the feedback that seeing the painting from this height was far from ideal. This work clearly struck a chord with viewers—for Basquiat was one of the most innovative figures in 20th-century art history. Moreover, as an artist of Puerto Rican and Haitian descent, his presence in the Museum’s collection signals the crucial contributions of Black and Latinx artists to the art historical canon, and the work contains a wealth of references to Afro-diasporic culture that are illuminated in the accompanying interpretive panel.

_{Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Sam F on view across from Pablo Picasso’s The Guitarist on Level 2}

We heard this feedback, and we agree—it’s time to move the Basquiat so that the conditions of display can better facilitate the close looking the work merits. As of today, the work will be on view on Level 2, at the threshold between the European and contemporary galleries. The work’s neighbors include paintings by Pablo Picasso and sculptures by Henry Moore, Jacques Lipchitz, and Aristide Maillol. It also abuts our collection of classical art, providing a compelling survey of how artists have treated the human form over thousands of years. Basquiat’s portrait of Sam, who used a wheelchair, rejects the idealism first introduced in the classical period and depicts subjects that are typically excluded as subjects of the fine arts. His signature formal style combines expressive mark making taken from both his past as a graffiti artist and the Neo-Expressionism movement that dominated art in New York in the 1980s, while also pointing to a groundbreaking synthesis and reconfiguration of the art historical language that now surrounds it. We invite you to come and see the work, and to let us know what you think.

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

Connections Across Collections: “Slip Zone”

Published September 5, 2021 Contemporary Art , Curatorial , Dallas , DFW , Exhibitions , works of art Closed

Opening September 14, Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia highlights the innovations in painting, sculpture, and performance that shaped artistic production in the Americas and East Asia during the mid-20th century. Find out about the transnational connections between pairs of artworks featured in the show from the exhibition’s curators.

Dr. Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Hoffman Family Senior Curator of Contemporary Art

While the narrative of US art history has focused on the singular achievements of Abstract Expressionism, it did not emerge on the world scene ex nihilo. Rather, US artists drew from multiple precedents, including the Mexican mural movement, which has special resonance for us at the DMA given our longstanding strengths in art from the region. In Slip Zone, Jackson Pollock’s Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls is paired with Crepúsculo by David Alfaro Siqueiros. Siqueiros taught Pollock to use industrial paints at the Experimental Workshop in New York in 1936, which would later inform his use of nontraditional art media in his classic era drip paintings. The expressionistic pathos of this earlier Pollock painting also mirrors the influence of José Clemente Orozco, whose murals he had seen at Dartmouth College the same year.

_{Images: Jackson Pollock, Figure Kneeling Before Arch with Skulls, about 1934–38, oil on canvas, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2017.7, © Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; David Alfaro Siqueiros, Crepúsculo, 1965, pyroxylin and acrylic on panel, private collection, © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City}

Dr. Vivian Li, The Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art

Using a hair dryer and polyvinyl acetate adhesive—commercially available since 1947 as Elmer’s Glue-All—Takesada Matsutani discovered that he could create corporeal, bulbous forms by blowing air into the material from behind until each “bubble” burst. Affixing them to the surface of his paintings, Matsutani constructed uncanny compositions. Similar to Matsutani and other members of the pioneering Gutai collective in Osaka, Robert Rauschenberg sought to blur the distinction between art and life through the use of everyday materials. For his Hoarfrost series, he transferred newspaper images to pieces of diaphanous fabric. After meeting the Gutai collective in 1964, Rauschenberg later collaborated with them, including onstage.

_{Images: Takesada Matsutani, Work-63-A.L. (The night), 1963, polyvinyl acetate adhesive, oil, and acrylic on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.5. Courtesy the artist. © Takesada Matsutani; Robert Rauschenberg, Night Hutch (Hoarfrost), 1976, ink on unstretched fabric, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the artist, 1977.21, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation}

Vivian Crockett, Former Nancy and Tim Hanley Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art

Around 1968 Lynda Benglis began pigmenting large vats of rubber latex with day-glo paint and pouring the dyed materials directly onto the floor. Created after Benglis visited a 1969 Helen Frankenthaler retrospective, this work is a nod to Frankenthaler’s method of pouring paint onto unprimed canvas. A founding member of the Gutai Art Association, Shozo Shimamoto was also deeply invested in experiments with materiality and technique. The artist often incorporated elements of performance in the creation of his paintings, such as throwing glass bottles of paint at the canvas. To produce Untitled – Whirlpool, Shimamoto poured layers of paint onto the canvas, removing the paintbrush as a mediating tool and leaving the final composition to chance and the physical, viscous qualities of the material itself.

_{Images: Lynda Benglis, Odalisque (Hey, Hey Frankenthaler), 1969, poured pigmented latex, Dallas Museum of Art, TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2003.2, © 2021 Lynda Benglis / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY; Shozo Shimamoto, Untitled – Whirlpool, 1965, oil on canvas, The Rachofsky Collection and the Dallas Museum of Art through the TWO x TWO for AIDS and Art Fund, 2012.1.3, © Shozo Shimamoto Association. Naples}

Behind the Scenes: Bosco Sodi

Published September 1, 2021 Behind-the-Scenes , Contemporary Art , Creativity , How It's Made , works of art Closed
Tags: Bosco Sodi, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

Opening September 14, 2021, Bosco Sodi: La fuerza del destino will feature approximately 30 outdoor sculptures by the artist in the DMA’s Sculpture Garden. Created from clay sourced at Sodi’s studio in Oaxaca, dried in the sun, and fired in a traditional brick kiln, the resulting surfaces bear the beautiful scars of their process. Take a behind-the-scenes look at the artist creating his work.

Preparing the clay to sculpt: