Friday, May 4, 2018

MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art



In an international exclusive, The Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) present MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art, a major exhibition of modern and contemporary masterworks from MoMA’s iconic collection, on view at NGV International in Melbourne, Australia, from June 9 through October 7, 2018. 

MoMA at NGV is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, in partnership with the National Gallery of Victoria, by Samantha Friedman, Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints; Juliet Kinchin, Curator of Modern Design; and Christian Rattemeyer, The Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, The Museum of Modern Art; and Miranda Wallace, Senior Curator, International Exhibition Projects, NGV.
The exhibition features more than 200 works—many of which have never been seen in Australia—from a line-up of seminal 19th- and 20th-century artists, including Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Louise Bourgeois, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Diane Arbus, Agnes Martin, and Andy Warhol. Bringing the exhibition up to the present are works by many significant 21st-century artists, including Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman, Olafur Eliasson, Andreas Gursky, El Anatsui, Rineke Dijkstra, Kara Walker, Mona Hatoum, and Camille Henrot.

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is a renowned institution dedicated to championing innovative modern and contemporary art. The Museum opened in Manhattan in 1929, with the vision to become ‘the greatest modern art museum in the world’. This is reflected in its interdisciplinary collection of almost 200,000 works by over 10,000 artists, shared between six curatorial departments: Architecture and Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media and Performance Art, Painting and Sculpture, and Photography.

The emergence of a ‘new art’ at the dawn of the twentieth-century will be represented by some of MoMA’s earliest acquisitions, including masterworks by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne. Works by pioneering Cubist and Futurist artists, including Pablo Picasso and Umberto Boccioni, will appear alongside the radically abstracted forms present in works by such artists as Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian, the surreal visual language of paintings by artists like Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo, and the spontaneity and tactility advanced in works by Alexander Calder and Jackson Pollock, and other prominent Abstract Expressionist artists.

Developments in art from the 1960s, from Minimalism through postmodernism, will be explored with the work of Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Lynda Benglis, Sol LeWitt, Jeff Koons, Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring, among others. Significant works of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century art, including major pieces by Kara Walker, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Olafur Eliasson, Huang Yong Ping, Mona Hatoum, El Anatsui and Camille Henrot, will foreground ideas that inform much contemporary art, such as those around cultural and national identity, and mobility in a globalised world.


 2 this period, from late - 19th - century urban and industrial transformation, through to the digital and global present. In recognition of both MoMA and NGV ’ s long - standing dedication to the study and presentation of architecture and design, the exhibition explore s the deep - seated connections between 2 0th - century art and design practice, with a particular focus on developments that shaped Europe in the 1920s and ’ 30s and the globalized world of the 1960s and ’ 70s. 

Unfolding across eight loosely chronological thematic sections, the exhibition opens with “Arcadia and Metropolis,” examining how artists at the dawn of the 20th century responded to the rise of cities. “The Machinery of the Modern World” highlights the simultaneity of foundational avant - garde movements (Futurism, Cubism, Orphism, Dada) and references MoMA’s 1934 Machine Art exhibition, while “A New Unity” presents the cross - media manifestations of the Bauhaus, de Stijl , the Russian avant - garde, and Joaquín Torres - Garcia’s School of the South. In “Inner and Outer Worlds,” iconic Surrealist paintings are seen alongside contemporaneous works that negotiate the relationship between interior and exterior landscapes. “Art as Action” highlights key examples of Abstract Expressionism and expands to include other forms of kineticism in the 1950s. 

The exhibition’s largest section, “Things as They Are,” encompasses the varied production of the 1960s and ’ 70s, from Pop art to Minima lism and Post - Minimalism, followed by “Immense Encyclopedia,” focusing on gestures of appropriation and reflections of identity from the 1980s and ’ 90s. The last section of the exhibition, “ Flight Patterns,” considers contemporary ideas of movement, migrat ion, and globalization. 

Installation and performance works (Olafur Eliasson’s Ventilator , Simone Forti’s Huddle , and Roman Ondak’s Measuring the Universe ) will also run throughout the course of the exhibition.


Throughout, these works of art are displayed alongside objects from MoMA’s Architecture and Design collection, many of which draw out concerns common to architects, designers and artists — creating a new visual language for the modern era. These include: an architectural model by Le Corbusier that featured in MoMA’s first architecture exhibition in 1932; graphic designs, furniture and textiles by artists involved in the influential workshops of the Bauhaus; Tomohiro Nishikado’s pioneering computer game Space Invaders (1978); and the original set of 176 emoji developed by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999 – characters which have since multiplied and become the visual language of the digital age.


 



Paul Cézanne
French 1839–1906
Still life with apples 1895–98
oil on canvas
68.6 x 92.7 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Lillie P. Bliss Collection, 1934
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018
 

Vincent van Gogh
Dutch 1853–90
Portrait of Joseph Roulin 1889
oil on canvas
64.4 x 55.2 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Mr. and Mrs. Paul Rosenberg, Nelson A. Rockefeller, Mr. and Mrs. Armand P. Bartos, The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection, Mr. and Mrs. Werner E. Josten, and Loula D. Lasker Bequest (all by exchange), 1989
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
French 1864–1901
La Goulue at the Moulin Rouge 1891–92
oil on cardboard
79.4 x 59.0 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Mrs. David M. Levy, 1957
Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2018


Pablo Picasso
Spanish 1881–1973
The architect's table 1912
oil on canvas on panel
72.6 x 59.7 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The William S. Paley Collection, 1971
© Succession Picasso / Licensed by Copyright Agency, 2018


Salvador Dalí
Spanish 1904–89
The persistence of memory 1931
oil on canvas
24.1 x 33.0 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Given anonymously, 1934
© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí / VEGAP, Spain. Copyright Agency, 2018




Frida Kahlo
Mexican 1907–54
Self-portrait with cropped hair 1940
oil on canvas
40.0 x 27.9 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., 1943
© Frida Kahlo Estate/ARS. Licensed by Copyright Agency, 2018


Internationally exclusive to Melbourne, MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art has been in development for more than two years and is curated by Samantha Friedman (Associate Curator, Drawings and Prints, MoMA), Juliet Kinchin (Curator of Modern Design, MoMA), Christian Rattemeyer (The Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator of Drawings and Prints, MoMA) and Miranda Wallace (Senior Curator, International Exhibition Projects, NGV).

The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue, a dynamic program of talks, tours and events, and the curated NGV Friday Nights programs, including live music, food and performances.