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June Issue 2004
Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, Offers Look at Contemporary Collections
Two years ago when Carla Hanzal was considering accepting the position of Curator of Contemporary Art for the Mint Museums, in Charlotte, NC, colleagues cautioned that the Museums and the Charlotte region lacked a sustained national profile in contemporary art outside of studio crafts. For her first major Mint exhibition (last summer's Passing was an inherited concept), Hanzal chose to challenge the perception.
Revelation: A Fresh Look at Contemporary
Collections on display through Sept.
19, 2004, at the Mint Museum of Art addresses relevant themes
and trends from the 1960s onward through 60 contemporary paintings,
sculptures, photographs and works on paper.
Revelation presents artworks from the past four decades
from minimalist statements of the 1960s and 1970s to popular culture-inspired
art of the 1970s and 1980s; to recent works that address environmental
issues and the quests for identity.
"The freedom from prescribed methods of creating art had its genesis in the 1960s, a time of vast social change," wrote Hanzal in the exhibition essay. "Artists began to question how art should (or should not) function: whether it should be accessible for to everyone or only to an elite few."
The formal concerns of modern painters of the 1950s - their emphasis on the essential qualities of color and flatness flatness - gave way to several important investigations: the spare statements of minimalist works that often incorporated grid patterning or machine- forged components as seen in Dan Flavin's 1971 fluorescent sculpture; the exploration of how the eye physiologically registers color and perception explored investigated by practitioners of op art illustrated by Gene Davis' Jack-in-Box, 1964; and the influence of popular culture (media and advertising) on the wealth of material imagery found in pop art.
In diametric contrast to the concerns of the minimalists and op artists were the explorations of a new generation of artists that who drew upon images found in popular culture. Robert Rauschenberg's, Andy Warhol's and James Rosenquist's prints in Revelation are inspired by media and advertising - newspapers, comics, pulp fiction, television, and incorporate appropriated photography to make a statement about the psychological content of iconic and materialistic images.
The media-influenced art of the 1960s and 1970s served as the precursor to 1980s and 1990s postmodernism, in which issues of personal, racial and gender identity were examined by artists and the works they created. The fetishlike sculpture Demeter Presiding Over Impotence, 1981, by Daisy Youngblood and portrait of Pocahantas by Marisol's portrait of Pocahantas, make statements about powerful females while Juan Sanchez's and Vivienne Koorland's paintings address issues of personal, racial and cultural identity. The generative themes found in Ruth Shortt's glass sculptures as well as Rick Horton's and Peggy River's gestural paintings convey potency and mystery.
From the 1960's onward, photography continued to be a viable source for artists as they composed and directed the images captured on film to make particular statements about malleable identity, as is evidenced in the photographs by Jacqueline Hayden and, Laurie Simmons, and the double portrait by Julie Moos. The landscape also became relevant subject matter for environmentally conscious artists, conveying a sort of "ecological revolt." Depictions of a fragile landscape revealed a loss of faith in modern technical progress. Masumi Hayashi's Love Canal #2, a panoramic photo collage of a contaminated landscape that was an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site, reflects these concerns.
New approaches to methods and materials were another major development from the 1970s onward. Artists began using a variety of unorthodox materials, such as Donald Sultan's use of tar, flooring material and flocking to create a painting. Sultan's Aqua Poppies Dec. 10, 2002, a recent acquisition to the Mint's collection, is arresting in scale, but its dense surface and evocative image belie the elaborate and time-consuming painting process that borrows from blue-collar construction techniques. Likewise, Bob Trotman's Cake Lady in part investigates how productivity is often tied to self-worth. The subservient 1950s house- wife that Trotman meticulously carved and painted is inspired by the character Laura Brown from Michael Cunningham's novel The Hours. Cake Lady bears a disfiguring crack, revealing the strain of self-deception involved in maintain- ing a heroic veneer of accomplished domesticity.
"The variety of works presented in Revelation illuminate the multiple perspectives gained by experiencing the world viscerally and with great curiosity," stated Hanzal. "With great sensitivity, the featured artists bring to their work an awareness of the mystery of both the physical and inner realms, reveling in the disconcerting as well as the sublime. This exhibition demonstrates a vibrant interest by area collectors in the art of our time that and could be viewed as a step in countering a perception past its prime."
For more info check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call 704-337-2000 or at (www.mintmuseum.org).
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