The Curated Object

Exhibitions Charlotte. The Heights of Fashion: Platform Shoes Then and Now. The Mint Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Platform Shoe  circa 1974-1978

labeled “Degas Exclusives” and “Young Dimensions” and “Saks Fifth Avenue / Made in Italy”

red and yellow kid leather and blue suede with cord laces on a 2” sculpted sole with a 4-1/4” heel

From a Private Collection

Peep-toe, Ankle-strap Platform Shoe  circa 1945-1949

labeled “Marquise / Originals”

black suede with red, purple, yellow, blue, pink, and green kid leather on a 1" platform sole with a 4-1/2" heel

Photography by David Ramsey

Platform Shoe  circa 1974-1979

labeled “El Poderoso / Made in Spain”

burgundy and cream patent leather on a 1-3/4” platform sole with a 4” heel

Private Collection

Photo courtesy of Love, P Vintage

The Heights of Fashion: Platform Shoes Then and Now

April 25-Spring 2011

 Platform shoes are back this spring, but don’t expect to see them on the runway. Opening April 25 at the Mint Museum of Art, The Heights of Fashion: Platform Shoes Then and Now showcases more than 60 platform shoes from the 1930s through the present – a true shoe lover’s delight!

                

With origins dating back to ancient Greece, platform shoes first appeared in Europe and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. The popularity of platforms reached its greatest height in the 1970s, when these shoes became associated with a rebellious youth movement that decried societal standards of older generations. From the free-spirited fashions of the 1970s to the trendy footwear of today, platforms have continued their role as fashion statements worn by both sexes.

                

The Heights of Fashion spans more than 100 years of platform shoes. Ranging from the delicate “lotus bud shoes” of 19th century China designed to emphasize women’s tiny bound feet to the chunky Goth platforms of the 1980s, the shoes on exhibit demonstrate how extreme variations on a style developed in response to different cultural philosophies and concepts of beauty.

The exhibition includes high fashion platform shoes by couture designers that move—sometimes with caution to the wearer—from the fashion runway to the streets. Footwear by Vivienne Westwood, Jimmy Choo and Roger Vivier reveal influential and innovative designs that incorporate modern engineering with vintage inspiration. Household brands such as Candie’s showcase the platform’s traditional thick sole and chunky heel, while unconventional materials such as titanium, chrome and carbon fiber offer an entirely new look in the sleek, yet feminine, designs of emerging designer Ruthie Davis. The platform’s first wedge heel appears in shoes designed by Salvatore Ferragamo, who is credited with transforming platform shoes from casual beachwear to high fashion in the 1930s.

 

For more information please visit The Mint Museum

-posted by Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Santa Fe. Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection. The New Mexico Museum of Art. The Curated Object

Image courtesy of the New Mexico Museum of Art

Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection 

New Mexico Museum of Art

April 24- Sep. 6, 2009

 

Intertwined and its accompanying catalog will provide an international look at contemporary basket making and its current level of innovation and experimentation. The baskets in their collection utilize a range of materials and techniques from traditional organic to commercial and often surprising media.  Represented artists include the well-known international to the regional—four from Santa Fe—and they work in both functional containers as well as closed, sculptural forms. 

 

Intertwined will include more than 70 traditional and non-traditional baskets, including works by some of the major figures in contemporary basket making:   Ed Rossbach, Katherine Westphal, Sally Black, Kiyomi Iwata, Kazuaki Honma, Dorothy Gill Barnes, Carol Eckert John McQueen, Elsie Holiday, Ferne Jacobs, Norma Minkowitz, Fran Reed, Lisa Telford, John Garrett, Kay Kahn, and many more. Both Garrett and Kahn are New Mexico artists.

 

“This exhibition demonstrates how basketry has been redefined during the past four decades,” says Laura Addison, Curator of Contemporary Art at the New Mexico Museum of Art and local curator for this exhibition. She goes on to say,  “Many of the works in Intertwined are unrecognizable as baskets; rather they are sculptures that employ traditional, and nontraditional, basketmaking techniques and materials. The Liebermans’ collection is exceptional in its quality and breadth. Included are works primarily from the United States, including Native American basketry, but also from Japan and Great Britain.”

 

The contemporary baskets of Intertwined are another sub-category of “crafts” that the Museum has been showing in recent years, including this summer’s exhibition Flux: Reflections on Contemporary Glass and several exhibitions on ceramics over the past decade.

 

Intertwined is curated by Heather Sealy Lineberry, Senior Curator, ASU Art Museum. Jane Sauer, nationally known basket maker and scholar, consulted on the selection process. The 48-page color catalog includes an essay by nationally-known curator and scholar Kenneth R. Trapp, and a short piece by artist Ferne Jacobs.

 

Intertwined: Contemporary Baskets from the Sara and David Lieberman Collection is organized by the Arizona State University Art, Tempe, Arizona. The ASU Art Museum is part of the Herberger College of Fine Arts at Arizona State University. 

For more information please visit: The New Mexico Museum of Art

-Posted by Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Vienna. GEORGES ADÉAGBO. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized. MAK. The Curated Object

Georges Adéagbo. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

Exhibition view MAK-Gallery

© Wolfgang Woessner/MAK, 2009

Georges Adéagbo. The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

Portrait Georges Adéagbo in the MAK-Gallery

© Peter Kainz/MAK, 2009

GEORGES ADÉAGBO: The Colonization and the History of the Colonized

April 1-Sep. 13, 2009

Georges Adéagbo, born 1942 in Cotonou, Benin, counts among the most important artists of West Africa. In 1999, he took part in the 48th Venice Biennale where he received the “Premio della giuria”, and in 2002, he was a participant of the documenta 11 (under the curatorship of Okwui Enwezor). 2008, he was the first contemporary artist ever to make an intervention on the premises of the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.

From April 1, 2009, the MAK presents “archival” installations of the artist best known for his assemblages, in which he brings together different information carriers such as books, handwritten notes, photos, textiles, cult objects etc. arranging them into new narrative spaces. If Adéagbo incorporates sculptures in his work, which, from a European perspective, are labeled as “tribal art” or “primitivism”, the issue in fact is the re-conquering and repossession of previously “colonized” objects. His elaborate art-making process reaches out across boundaries between epochs, continents, cultures, and genres, starting out from the art of Africa and Oceania; the subjects that he addresses include religions, war, socialism, slavery, art, and history, as well as the stories of—mostly male—historical personalities.

For the MAK Gallery, Adéagbo is planning to cover the floor and walls with an“assemblage-like” installation, visualizing the history of colonization and the colonized in an arrangement of materials in rare density. Moreover, he will reach out beyond his own exhibition by intervening directly in sections of the MAK permanent exhibition which he will examine for colonial implications. In the permanent exhibition Baroque Rococo Classicism (with an artistic intervention by Donald Judd), for example, he will respond to a mid-18th century cabinet, a present made by the town of Eger to Emperor Karl VI.

As a piece of so-called state furniture, it represents symbolically a claim to hegemony over all continents, the meaning of which Adéagbo examines, questions, and transforms in various different ways. Adéagbo is well aware of the purposive character of the objects, but achieves the necessary artistic transformation precisely by placing them in new contexts, or unfolding new contexts, courageously altering history by re-telling it in a different way. His working method is based on combining objects made for him in Benin and others which he finds at or around the exhibition site and incorporates in his work; the pieces thus created always define a concrete frame of reference.

Georges Adéagbo was born as the oldest of eleven children in Cotonou, the largest city of Benin in West Africa. Against the wishes of his family, he went to study law in Abidjan, Côte D’Ivoire, and in Rouen, France. After the death of his father, his family urged him to return to Benin in 1971 where he lived in impoverished conditions. From this time until 1993, he created a large number of assemblages in his house, which happened to come to the attention of a French curator. Many important exhibitions followed: “Big City: Artists from Africa”, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1995; “La mort et la résurrection”, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris, 1997; Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg, 1997; “Roteiros. Roteiros. Roteiros …”, São Paulo Biennal, São Paulo, 1998; “Kunstwelten im Dialog”, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 1999; Biennale di Venezia, Venedig, 1999 (“Premio della giuria” for “The Story of the Lion”); “Abraham – the Friend of God”, P.S.1, New York, 2000; “Das Pythagoreische Zeitalter”, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, 2001; documenta 11, Kassel, 2002; “Le théâtre du monde..!”, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, 2004; “Abraham, l’ami de Dieu. Philadelphia version”, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, 2006; “Tout de Moi à Tous”, DAAD Gallery, Berlin, 2007; “La rencontre..! Venise–Florence”, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florenz, 2008.

For more information please visit: MAK

EXHIBITIONS DOYLESTOWN. FROM SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES: METAL TRENCH ART FROM WORLD WAR I AND WORLD WAR TWO. MICHENER ART MUSEUM. THE CURATED OBJECT

Unknown artist (Hungarian), Decorated artillery shell

WWII, H. 15.125 x W. 3.5 inches

Collection of Hollingsworth Fine Arts 

Unknown artist (Hungarian) , Model airplane, WWII

H. 9 x W. 6.25 inches

Collection of Hollingsworth Fine Arts

 

From Swords to Plowsahres: Metal Trench Art 
March 14-May 31, 2009

One need look no further than this exhibit for confirmation that the artistic impulse can thrive in even the most unlikely, indeed unpleasant, dangerous, and wearying of circumstances. Ranging from vessels hewn out of decorated artillery shells to a meticulously crafted model bomber made with salvaged rifle cartridges, these 300 works-- on loan from private collector Gary Hollingsworth-- demonstrate a wide variety of metal working techniques, art styles, and sophistication. Made by bored soldiers, prisoners of war, and convalescence personnel during the two world wars, these vases, lamps, cigarette lighters and ashtrays arose from every salvagable scrap of metal available, including helmets, shrapnel, and airplane parts.  By the second world war, even though trenches had become a thing of the past and soldiers were constantly on the march, the Red Cross was disseminating handicraft kits, containing tools and supplies, to ensure that soldiers were still able to create what became ever-more-complicated works.

For more information, please visit : The Michener Museum
Posted by JoAnn Greco  

Exhibitions Santa Ana. Art of the Samurai. The Bowers Museum. The Curated Object

Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum

April 19–June 14, 2009

SANTA ANA, CA—Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum features 81 objects from the Tokyo National Museum, representing the art and aesthetics of the samurai culture of Japan. This collection dates primarily to the Edo period (1603–1868) with many pieces classified as Important Cultural Property and National Treasures. The exhibition features various objects that are a testament to the accomplished level of society, education, and skills developed by the samurai during the 10th and 20th centuries. Some objects included are handcrafted swords, armor, tea-ceremony utensils, screen and scroll paintings, Noh theatre costumes, and other fine works. Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum opens at the Bowers Museum on April 19, 2009, and remains on view through June 14, 2009, in the Anderson-Hsu-Tu Gallery.

For nearly 700 years, from the latter half of the 12th century until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the military bushi (warrior class) were at the helm of government in Japan. During the mid-Heian period (10th century), groups of bushi warriors formed throughout the country. Because some of the warriors served the centrally located nobles in Kyoto, they were called samurai or, literally, “those who serve in close attendance to nobility.” Originally, their social position was low and they were considered as assistants or attendants; however, in the Edo period, the samurai began using armed force and became more powerful. They created a culture of their own based on the lifestyles of the nobles, which was marked by strength and simplicity. The life of the warriors was simple, and their philosophy stressed the importance of bravery and dedication to their lords, as well as their clans and houses. This became the basis of bushido (way of the warrior) and elevated the samurai into a refined social class.

Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum illustrates the multiple aspects of samurai life from their battle regalia to daily way of living. The exhibition consists of two thematic sections revealing the samurai legacy: Attire of the Samurai, which mainly features swords and armor; and Samurai Culture, featuring costumes for Noh performance and tea ceremony paraphernalia, plus examples of their everyday items, including garments, accessories, and furnishings. In addition, the exhibition includes the Chronicle of Yoshitsuni screen loaned by Etsuko and Joe Price, and the Shin'enKan Foundation of Los Angeles.

Samurai viewed the battlefield as a place to display their bravery and honor, and they were granted lands from their lords when achieving military success. They risked their own lives to make names for themselves as heroic and skilled warriors and wore their battle attire with pride. This sense of duty influenced the colorful designs of Japanese armor. Domaru Gusoku Style Armor with White Lacing (17th century) reflects this type of brightly decorated and highly embellished armor. The Domaru-style armor had an opening under the right arm and was preferred by high-ranking warlords for its greater agility and light weight.

Swords were the most important tools for the samurai and cherished to such a degree that they were referred to as their spirit. Japanese swords are known for their unique curvature, a characteristic developed during the early 11th century. To receive one as a gift from the shogun (head of military government) or daimyo (feudal lord) was held in high esteem. Usually, the samurai wore a long and short sword at their hip along the belt. The exhibition includes a tachi (high curve) sword made by the famous swordsmith Sukezane, a National Treasure from the Kamakura period (1192–1333). The external design of the sword features a shorter, sharper tip that creates a powerful impression.

Away from the battlefield, the samurai perceived Noh performance and tea ceremony as the two most important genres of cultural life. Noh theatre is an ancient art form that was created during the middle ages, where the women’s roles are played by men. The level of Noh drama developed from a form of entertainment enjoyed by commoners to an art form appreciated by members of the nobility and warrior class. With masks and costumes, Noh actors express the highly spiritual sense of the story and invite the viewers’ hearts to the world of yugen (profound grace and subtlety).

The Japanese tea ceremony, also known as cha-no-yu, was first brought to Japan from China by a Zen priest during the 12th century. Drinking tea took place in a tea ceremony room, with an alcove decorated with hanging scroll paintings or calligraphy, and specially designated utensils were used to enhance the sense of appreciation. The tea ceremony is not merely about drinking tea, but also an opportunity for the host and guest to interact with each other and express their feelings. Examples of Japanese tea instruments used for private tea gatherings by samurai families are displayed in the exhibition.

Edo Period

The Edo period was established in 1603. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa regime, governed the country from Edo (today known as Tokyo), although Kyoto and Osaka were the primary political, economical, and cultural centers at the time. In 1868, the period ended when imperial rule was restored with the Meiji Restoration. In 1615, Tokugawa destroyed the Toyotomi family with military campaigns in Osaka and established a dictatorial ruling system with his great militaristic and economic power. From that time, the following 14 generations of shogun, with a council of bureaucratic samurai, ruled Japan indirectly through vassals called daimyo in a feudal system.

Throughout the Edo period, the country was stable because no wars were large enough to endanger the government. A social system was established where people separated into immobile classes of samurai, farmers, industrial craftsmen, and merchants—each with education and culture suited to their respective classes.

Organization

Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum is organized by the Tokyo National Museum (TNM) and curated by Kazutoshi Harada, TNM Senior Research Chair. Julie Lee, Bowers Curator of Exhibitions, is coordinating the exhibition presentation at the Bowers Museum.

Publication

Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum is accompanied by a softbound, lavishly illustrated catalogue. The publication includes a message from Teiichi Sato, Tokyo National Museum Executive Director; preface by Peter C. Keller, Ph.D., Bowers Museum President; essays by Kazutoshi Harada and Nobuyuki Matsumoto, Tokyo National Museum Director of Curatorial Planning; and list of object labels and a historical chronology. Art of the Samurai: Selections from the Tokyo National Museum can be purchased at the Bowers Gallery Store.

Related Programs

The following lectures are presented in conjunction with the exhibition. For a list of other related events and films, please contact the Bowers Museum’s press office at 714.567.3642. All lectures take place in the Norma Kershaw Auditorium.

For more information please visit: The Bowers Museum

Posted by Joanne Molina

Exhibitions Milan. 18% Gray and Let There Be Light: Industreal and The SAIC at Salone del Mobile 2008. The Curated Object

Photograph, glasswork + design

Photograph by Danny Hsu
 

Photograph by Danny Hsu

18% Gray and Let There Be Light: Industreal and The SAIC at Salone del Mobile 2008
April 16-21, 2008

18%GRAY

While light and its absence are everyday phenomena, the students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago treat the matter of light as a tangible and formable substance—an extraordinary material for design exploration. The result of their experimentation is 18%GRAY, which will be presented at the Fabbrica del Vapore, during FuoriSalone 2008. Light is filtered through artifacts and discrete constructions to produce zones of edited brightness and shadow, of measure and effect. Illumination is used to transform and reveal the inherent beauty of everyday materials. 18%GRAY demonstrates the power of design to coax the sublime from the commonplace.

18%GRAY  =  Shireen Bishop, Robyn Carter, S.J. Lee, Caroline Linder, Michael Riha, Eric Rosenbaum, Blair Schmidt,  Sonia Shim, Lisa Smith, Greta Stepp, Zach Weiss (designers)  Alicia Kuri Alamillo and Jessie Li (graphic artists)  Helen Maria Nugent and Douglas Pancoast (faculty)
+
6,000 linear feet of metal ball chain, 3,000 square feet of gray paper, yards of fiber-optic cable, hundreds  of LED’s, polarizing filters, a dozen aluminum wall studs, and some beautiful, hand-blown glass. 18%GRAY is the outcome/product of a special two-semester design course named the GFRY Studio. The work of the GFRY Studio is supported in part by a grant from the Motorola Foundation.
-Copy by G. Corti

LET THERE BE LIGHT
The concepts and the projects of light, elaborated by the students of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which Industreal propose in an exhibition to be shown at the Fabbrica del Vapore during the Salone del Mobile 2008, will be above all, an up-to-date reflection about the form of illumination. The four designs selected for FuoriSalone 2008 are: Impromptu (Michael Riha), Flex (Zach Weiss), Fizz (Caroline Linder), and Line (Shireen Bishop and Greta Stepp). (Visit www.saic.edu/18gray to view designs.) Industreal has shared in this research convinced that light is made of the same material from which ideas are made and maybe it is not a coincidence that a flash of genius is often represented in drawings by a light bulb above a head. However, to conceive and design light means thinking modestly in the same terms as in the origin of all creativity: ‘let there be light’ and there was light.’ Light was good and light was separated from darkness. Light steals things from the darkness taking them into the world of things illuminated, which then exist in our eyes due to the virtue of the light itself.

Proposing a project of ideas for students, around the concept of light, we should reflect (another luminous terminology) on the potential either of direct light or reflected light. Light is not necessarily electric light; light is fire or flame, ray or mirror, crystal or window, jewel or opening, lens or spark.
However, designing light signifies that we must concentrate on a concept simple and powerful, with a significance that appreciates flights of fantasy and poetic gestures. The imagination flies high, at the speed of light, abolishing space and time. The theme is like a caress that brings things to light, (!) naming them. That is why every word, every mark is the promise of something that before was only imagined, which when studied and in the end, after much thought and testing, finally becomes a product.
After all, in our world there is not a shortage of things, except the light that comes from ideas.
-Copy by G. Corti

For more information please visit: SAIC and Industreal

-Joanne Molina

Exhibitions London. International Baroque. The Victoria & Albert Museum. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

International Baroque

International Baroque (1600 - 1800)
4 April - 19 July 2009

Exuberant, ornate and theatrical, the Baroque is synonymous with richness, luxury and extravagance.  The Baroque style was born in Italy in the 1620s. Over the next hundred and fifty years it came to dominate European art, design and architecture and was carried to Latin America, Asia and the Pacific, becoming the first global style. Baroque was rich and exciting: for the first time it was possible to express in design, architecture and art the full range of range of human emotions, experiences and aspirations.

It was a style perfectly suited to an age which saw the growth of absolute rule and a newly vigorous Catholic Church: the result was an unprecedented burst of palace building and furnishing, of great formal gardens, of churches calculated to inspire the faithful, of ballet and opera and of extravagant public festivals. This pioneering exhibition will bring together art and architecture and the whole range of the decorative arts, from the Baltic to Sri Lanka.

For more information please visit: The Victoria & Albert Museum

-Joanne Molina

Events Sydney. International Silver Symposium. Rococo silver in 18th century England: Paul de Lamerie and the Huguenots. The Powerhouse Museum Australia. The Curated Object: International Decorative Arts Exhibitions

Silver: Paul de Lamerie from the Cahn Collection exhibition is organized and circulated by the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and made possible by the Cahn Family Foundation and FedEx Corporation.

Saturday 19 April 2008, 9.30am – 4.30pm


In the first half of the 18th century, London was a centre for the production of luxury goods and de Lamerie’s pieces set the standard for luxury and fine craftsmanship. The popularity of coffee and tea in the 18th century gave rise to a range of specialized wares, and similarly, the introduction of new foods in the French taste required serving vessels in the latest style. This major international symposium celebrates the opening of Silver: Paul de Lamerie from the Cahn collection, a spectacular exhibition (exclusive to the Powerhouse Museum) drawing on the renowned American collection of Paul and Elissa Cahn from 18 April 2008. Symposium speakers include Ellenor Alcorn, exhibition curator and author from the USA; Dr Tessa Murdoch, Deputy Keeper from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and author and historian Robert Nash, from the Huguenot Society of Australia.
Silver Symposium Flyer

Cost: $95.00 (includes Museum admission, refreshments, lunch, and exhibition viewing with curators)   
Book before 8th February 2008 and receive a 10% discount with our early bird rate 
Bookings: www.moshtix.com.au ph: 1300 438 849
For more information contact Eva Czernis-Ryl
on 61(0)2 9217 0138 or evar@phm.gov.au  

-Joanne Molina