1992–98
1997–98
Virtually Real: Paintings and Drawings of the World of Robert Birmelin
April 25 – June 7, 1998
Leaving the Court - the Photographer. Robert Birmelin. Acrylic on canvas. 1990-91. 72 x 108"
Collection of the artist.
In the presence of Robert Birmelin’s paintings, there is a sense of recognizing a transition from life into art, enhanced by the scale and drama of their execution and by the visual games the artist plays upon the viewer. Attacking his canvas with zeal, Birmelin brings new meaning to the slice of life realism anticipated in the 1960s by the Pop Art movement’s response to Abstract Expressionism. Then, as now, the subject is a fleeting view of action on the streets of Manhattan amidst crowds and teaming population. However, somewhat like television sound bites, Birmelin presents visual snippets of life in the city, seen as fragments of perception which offer the feeling of reality rather than tie illustration of it. The viewer occupies the artist’s position – action happens to the viewer, or threatens to do so, as the crowd presses forward.
Birmelin’s recent works seem to cast off the agitation of these cityscapes approaching in his paintings of the same scale a sense of mystery and duality. The artist’s perspective as now changed into a quieter, more voyeuristic position. Mostly of domestic interiors, the paintings suggest a narrative that we are intended to comprehend. Objects occupy strategic positions as if they are references to unraveling the puzzle before us; people are truncated at the periphery, making no effort to interact with the artist. To further the sense of melodrama, the paintings disguise an alternative reading by including an inverted picture which appears to define a mystery of a different sort. This dual nature of each painting thwarts attempts to decipher meaning, hence, the viewer is mystified and experiences a sense of awe.
Enchanting his audience with voluptuous technique as well as provocative content, Birmelin employs a drawing style that is rooted in an understanding of the visual world he portrays. For the last 23 years as Professor of Art at Queens College, Birmelin has brought to his students a reverence for the underpinnings of good drawing. Trained at both the Cooper Union in New York and the Slade School of Art at University of London, Birmelin finished his graduate degree at Yale in 1960 where the department was influenced by Bauhaus artist Joseph Albers. Albers’s work on the interaction of colors proposed a view of perception which altered a color merely by changing the color of the background.
The twenty large works in the current exhibition were selected by the artist to demonstrate the relationship of drawing to the painted canvas. Robert Birmelin has exhibited at more than ten college galleries, receiving numerous grants and scholarships including three National Endowment for the Arts grants and a Fulbright Scholarship. He has recently held a major retrospective of his drawings at the Jersey City Museum and an exhibition this past fall at the Peter Findlay Gallery on 57th Street, New York. The Lore Degenstein Gallery welcomes Robert Birmelin to Susquehanna University.
Landscapes of Jewish Experience: Paintings by Samuel Bak
March 18 – April 19, 1998
Trains. Samuel Bak. Oil on linen. 1991. 48 x 63"
Collection of the artist, presented in cooperation with the Pucker Gallery, Boston.
Samuel Bak’s twenty large landscapes bear witness to the artist’s childhood experience in Vilna, Poland, during World War II. Bringing to his audience a compelling message of Jewish survival in the face of Nazi oppression, the images are replete with metaphors for remembrance conceived as if to thwart a recurrence of this kind of devastation to humanity. Each painting, executed with a meticulous attention to detail and a precise rendering of natural forms, bears a distant resemblance to paintings of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Subject matter and artistic intention, however, mitigate references to the dreamlike imagery of such an artist as Salvador Dali to create in Bak’s paintings a landscape of magic realism fraught with the substance of recalled trauma. Bak thrusts his viewer into the landscape, and, by extension, into the emotional recollection of a past to hold before us for all time.
In the years preceding 1941 when the Germans invaded Vilna, Bak was a small boy, immersed in a center of Yiddish leaning amidst a Jewish culture of 57,000. By the time of the liberation in July 1944 only a few thousand had survived – Bak and his mother among them. The destruction of not only his home, by the entire Jewish community laid bare the artist’s pain and defined his future artistic perceptions. The artist described his awareness that his paints convey “a sense of a world that was shattered, of a world that was broken, of a world that exists again through an enormous effort to put everything together, when it is absolutely impossible to put it together because the broken things can never become whole again.”
Bak’s visual references to symbols and structures rivet the viewer’s attention to the devastation of his culture through the melding of substance into the nurturing landscape from with springs all life. Life in memory cannot put away what for him has been wrought in those days. Effigies of houses appear ghostlike as shards of human reality now buttressing the present by their shear numbers. Crematoria have become the new abode, sometimes appearing in the form of the train used to transport people to their doom.
The text of Bak’s paintings remains at once declarative and circumspect, inviting involvement at both the immediate and the contemplative level. Complex symbolism, disguised and blended with the landscape, have undergone exhaustive analysis by Lawrence L. Langer in his catalogue for the exhibition. As a scholar of Holocaust themes, Langer resolutely offers his view of the artist’s motivation in that “perhaps, for Bak himself, the rituals of belief have been replaced by the equally demanding rituals of art. His paintings are his acts of devotion, his tributes to remembrance.”
The Lore Degenstein Gallery presents this series of twenty paintings accompanied by a selection of works on paper that share the artist’s thoughts at the moment of their germination. We are exceedingly appreciative of Samuel Bak’s efforts to bring this body of work to Susquehanna. Through the cooperation of the Pucker Gallery, Boston, arrangements have been made to mount this exhibition for our campus and community.
Public and Private Eyes: Photojournalists' View of Rural Pennsylvania by the Farm Security Administration and H. Winslow Fegley
Jan. 31 – March 1, 1998
Household Supply Store (detail). Walker Evans. Archival silver print. 11 x 14"
Contributing to a view of Pennsylvania’s history of its people during the first 40 years of the 20th century, the concerns of this exhibition will be to examine two collections of photographs of rural Pennsylvania each of which exemplifies a position that both documents and manipulates the view of the history they present. Photographs by Pennsylvania photojournalist, H. Winslow Fegley, offer the simple intention to preserve the history of the rural Pennsylvania German community. Similarly focused on the rural community, images by photographers working for Federal assistance programs of the 1930s begin with an intention to serve an agenda predetermined by the project organizers. Both groups of photographers contribute to a definition of Pennsylvania’s history, but with distinctly different results. Seen together, it is possible to recognize the extraordinary value of visual documents as historical evidence of an era, particularly when the context and intention of the photographer offer their own interpretation.
In the early decade of the 1900s, H. Winslow Fegley produced a focused view of Pennsylvania Germans through a large body of photographs. Fegley’s images appear to have been created in the community of his birth around 1903-5 as a project for preserving a historical past that was immanently declining. His documentation of the practices, people, and customs of the German-American farming community in Pennsylvania exhaustively preserves the visual history of a cultural that compromises a significant part of the state’s population. Focusing on the farms and people of Hereford, a village in Berks County 50 miles north of Philadelphia, the photographer builds a comprehensive study of people in costume indigenous to their heritage who are posed in settings that define their homes and workplaces. Individuals are shown in the act of preparing food for the community defining every process of a working farm from planting to harvest to table preparation or, in the case of livestock, from rearing to butchering to the cleaning of meat for food. The entire body of these photographs address the issue of documentation of a bygone era.
Fegley’s journalistic approach to his history of the Pennsylvania German community must have been for a project quite grand. Several hundred photographic images—some glass plate negatives and around 150 silver prints—are in the collection given to the Schwenfelder Library and Museum in Pennsburg, PA. The photographs, many of which bear captions describing Hereford subjects, propose an ambitious documentary project suitable for an article for the Pennsylvania German Society (Fegley became a member in 1902), or, even further, for use in a book. Fegley’s agenda seems straightforward: to document the culture he knew, nostalgically acknowledging the forthcoming decline of an era.
Extrapolating from their images an understanding of particular ethnic or societal groups, the viewer is given the subtly imposed perspective of the photographer who may have altered the meaning to suit a particular agenda. In a selection from a second group of photographs in the exhibition, those of the Far Security Administration (FSA) now in the collection of the Library of Congress, social conditions during the climactic years of the Great Depression of the 1930’s are preserved in a pictorial essay of the times. Among this latter group of more than 70,000 photographs only around 700 images of Pennsylvania subjects appear that bear upon an understanding of the economic impact of the Depression felt by people of the Commonwealth. While, like Fegley’s work, the FSA subjects show people in farming communities, they place greater emphasis on narrative, metaphor, and a definite political agenda.
Roy E. Stryker was hired in April 1935 to head up the historical section of the Resettlement Administration (in 1936 it became the FSA-Farm Security Administration) to describe and elucidate the social responses of rural America to Roosevelt’s New Deal Federal assistance programs. Receiving his authority and direction from his former Columbia economics professor, Rexford G. Tugwell who had set up the Resettlement Administration, Stryker hired a team of photographers who could work in the field under his precise direction. The photographs were given written assignments identifying areas of the country to photograph, along with a rationale describing a point of view to take with their subjects—a “shooting script.” Accompanying the instructions were books and pamphlets discussing background material on the locales, which included data on economics, history of the community, and every imaginable kind of information that might familiarize the photographer with his or her assignments. The director maintained rigid control over the objectives of the photography project. What he was unable to control was the photographers’ creative vision.
Though the disparate subjects of the early photographic studies of Pennsylvania German farmers by H. Winslow Fegley and those of the FSA photographer of the 1930’s seem unrelated, their objectives appear less divergent when considering the artists’ intentions. Fegley, whose career was dedicated to words as well as images, ennobles his subjects much like those of the FSA photographers, engendering a sense of dignity in their humble tasks. Even Ben Shahn’s “Children Picking over Refuse in a Dumpsite,” shares with Fegley’s women an iconic quality given to their occupations that brings respect for their industriousness in the consideration of their economic struggles. A metaphor for these people is created by Walker Evans in his Household Supply Store, 1935, which pairs utilitarian objects in a display window—pots and pans nestle together like family members, a suggestion of their future place in the American home.
The FSA photographers—academically trained, professional, and urbane—initiated their photographic project as a journalistic assignment not unlike that of Fegley. Finding the personalities of their subjects compelling, they each sought to emulate artistic elements in their compositions, evoking in the picture not only the poignant situation of the sitter, but the aesthetic sensibility of the photographer.
The exhibition developed from a collaboration between Susan Johnson and Valerie Livingston for papers given at the Pennsylvania Historical Association in November, 1997. Through a University Grant, thirty archivally printed photographs were added to the collection of the Lore Degenstein Gallery.
James Fitzgerald and Spiritual Transformation 1899 - 1971
Oct. 25 – Dec. 14, 1997
Oxen. James Fitzgerald. Watercolor on paper. 22.5 x 29.25"
In the collection of Anne Hubert.
James Fitzgerald’s powerful watercolor paintings of the American coast and the environs of California and New England, his various sojourns, confirm a commitment to the legacy of American painting that harks back to 19th-century realist landscapes. With the firmly rooted traditions of American art in his grasp, Fitzgerald brings to that history of American art in his grasp, Fitzgerald brings to that history a strength of 20th-century conviction that sustains a medium once relegated to a less serious focus, watercolor. At the hands of the modernist, Fitzgerald’s art transformed watercolor into a substance both enduring and profound.
Painting the world around him—whether a humble team of plow animals or a scene of nature unleashed on rock and sea—Fitzgerald brought light, paint, and inspiration together to evoke his personal encounter with his subjects, linking viewer and motif to his experience with nature. Countering the traditional preference for oil painting, he made of his watercolors a strikingly permanent visual record. The work is as enduring as the stones of the sea he portrays.
No neophyte to the art world, Boston-born Fitzgerald studied from 1919-1923 at the Massachusetts College of Art with American masters, Cyrus Dallin, Wilbur Hamilton, and Ernest Major and subsequently at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His career took him in the 1920’s to Monterey, California, with the Cannery Row artists’ and writers’ circle, working on projects for the public works programs in the 1930s. There he developed a testy camaraderie with John Steinbeck and Edward “Doc” Ricketts along with the intellectual community that they engendered.
It wasn’t until Fitzgerald became a regular summer resident on Monhegan Island, Maine, in 1938 that his art began to evolve. The immersion of the artist into the spirit of the harsh island declared itself in the transformation of his art from academic realism into virile expressionism. Fitzgerald approached the subject of the surf, sea, and rocks with a vigor reminiscent of the powerful paintings of Winslow Homer, imbuing his work also with the calligraphic strokes of Oriental art informed by his interest in Eastern philosophy.
Fitzgerald eventually purchased the studio of Rockwell Kent, one of the early artist settlers of the island, deriving spiritual solace and metaphysical inspiration from the seafaring community. The island’s artist-colony atmosphere in the summer encouraged Fitzgerald to explore a relationship with the life of the sea, but he did not engage in the seafaring activities upon which the local lobstermen and fishermen depended for their livelihood. Fitzgerald was a voyeur of that life and yet a dependent on the arduous experience, which informed his art and inspired his approach to it.
During his more than thirty-year encounter with Monhegan Island, Fitzgerald continually read and studied Oriental philosophies, which became sustenance for his art. A friendship developed in 1958 with Anne Hubert, his champion and confidant who, along with her husband, Ed, assisted Fitzgerald in his financial struggle to acquire Kent’s cottage when the studio became less suitable for a home in his later years. The dedication of the two devoted friends to assist the artist in his times of greatest need proves a model of devotion to a belief in the artist’s right to pursue his art unencumbered by financial constraints.
The Huberts’ collection of Fitzgerald’s paintings provides a context from which to view the late artist. Selecting works that typify the various moods and sites which moved him, the Huberts maintained a record of artistic achievement that defines both a person and personal vision. The paintings in the exhibition have been selected to represent a small segment of each of several topics that sustained Fitzgerald’s interest throughout his life, including portraits of his former wife, Pegs, and views of the magnificent sea off the Maine Coast.
Textiles From Vanishing Cultures
Sept. 13 – October 12, 1997
Khorjin. Pair of Saddlebags. Kurd, Eastern Turkey. 36 x 44"
Collection of Valerie Justin.
The art of weaving utilitarian objects from the fibers of herd animals belongs to a variety of cultures around the world. Weavings of rugs for use as tent rugs, prayer rugs, offering rugs, tent dividers, and other purposes share commonality with those of saddle and food bags, tent and animal trappings, shawls and blankets: exemplified the designs and patterns that identify their culture, and their creators are almost every women. Their pastoral societies which depend upon herd animals to supply daily needs make use of harvested wool spun into yarn and transformed into objects that express traditions of techniques and designs handed down for generations. Within the confines of these traditions, idiosyncratic variations define the individual whose desire for personal expression provides imaginative hybrids.
The cultures which create these textiles are rapidly vanishing. Tribal peoples of nomadic and semi-nomadic lifestyles living in a traditional manner are yielding to urban pressures to settle, leaving behind their needs for the woven objects. As a result the art of weaving is also disappearing. Some of the cultures from which magnificent tribal weavings have been produced are themselves vanishing. Political events in Bosnia and Afghanistan have caused devastating effects upon communities which provided remarkable tribal textiles.
As the production of these textiles declines so also does the opportunity to document the sources and styles which they represent. Such examples as those appearing in the exhibition in the Lore Degenstein Gallery provide a cross-section of cultural life in the Middle East, North Africa, North America, and Central Asia from 50 to 100 years past. Included in the exhibition are examples from Afghanistan, Iran, Peru, Mexico, and the Navajos.
The exhibition of more than 40 objects are a part of a large collection by Valerie Sharaf Justin, who has brought together examples of a variety of types of textiles representative of numerous cultures. Author of a pioneering study of kilim weavings, Flat-Woven Rugs of the World, 1980, Justin observed that among the weavers, “women did most of the work—wives and daughters dutifully taking care of the home. But, they were more than just household drudges—they were expected to be agile with the loom and make textiles both useful and pleasing.” Their role is underscored by an old Turkish saying, “No food for a woman who cannot weave a carpet.” The exhibition was organized by Landau Travelling Exhibitions of Los Angeles, California.
1996–97
Masters of the French Poster From the Collection of Joseph and Ann Silbaugh
From the Collection of Joseph and Ann Silbaugh
April 20 – June 8, 1997
Orangina. Bernard Villemot. Lithograph on paper. 1953. 36.5 x 27.5"
The French contribution to graphic design in the twentieth century is no more apparent than its rich heritage and continuing tradition of poster art that appears on the streets of France and in art museums all over the world. France is credited with having initiated this art form in the late nineteenth century with the extraordinary efforts of Jules Charet who brought color, images, and lithography together with words that conveyed information as well as invention in communicating messages to the public. In the twentieth century the poster literally becomes the art of the street, as advertising is transformed into visual pleasure for the passerby.
With the emergence of the poster as an avenue of opportunity for artists interested in reaching diverse audiences with their drawings and lithographs, experiments with the medium of the poster bear the names of painters Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse. Some of these artists innovated the gallery poster, designed for the specific purpose of advertising an exhibition of their work. The intention of this poster was not to reproduce a work in the exhibition, but to allow the artist the freedom of conceiving a new image that responds to the poster medium. Working with other such lithograph ateliers (studios) as Mourlot in Paris, the results were also printed on heavier paper and editioned for collectors in the art world.
Other artists, focused more exclusively on the realm of visual advertising, developed their art solely for the commissions of their clients. From announcing events to advertising merchandise, these artists directed their posters to the art of persuasion, engaging in the attention of the audience to try new experiences or to purchase the company products. With such a clearly defined goal, the medium evolved with the times, responding to the visual trends in avant garde art movements—Cubism, Surrealism, and later, Pop Art.
The poster also developed new visual criteria of its own, owing to the basic requirement of attracting the attention of the audience. Leonetto Cappiello working in Paris throughout his career, eliminated inessentials from his posters and used what he called "the science of the blot," a means of contrasting the poster with its environment so that it would not compete for attention. To this end he placed a figure on against a stark background, giving it an activity to perform that related to the product while minimizing the text. The text itself was subjected to manipulation for the sake of design in the posters of A. M. Cassandre. Working in Paris in the 1930's, Cassandre described the lettering as "the star of the wall stage because it alone is charged with telling public the magic formula it sells." With this objective in mind, Cassandre's posters incorporate the text into the image, allowing the typography to become a graphic element of the picture.
Twentieth-century poster artists earned their place in history not only through their innovative designs, but through their identification with certain advertisers with whom they established a long-term relationship. Bernard Villemot's images sold such products as Orangina drink and Bally shoes from the 1950s through the 1980s. Villemot stated that "a good poster must be a telegram." Subsuming words to images in his posters, visual power alone conveys the message, which is clearly evident in his first poster for Orangina published in 1953.
Artists of the French poster established graphic design criteria that crossed cultural barriers, facilitating accessibility to the messages their advertisers desired. Evolving their art from an emphasis on text at the beginning of the twentieth century, the artists subsequently placed their focus on pictorial means to bring universal legibility to an international public. As this evolution is observed, the discovery of individual masters emerges to recount a history rich in visual pleasure not only for the audience of the street, but for the audience of the museum as well.
The exhibition, Masters of the French Poster, surveys issues of graphic design and advertising communications with a view of contributions by individual artists of the twentieth century whose innovations define distinctive cultural, artistic, and historical trends. Joseph and Ann Silbough, who have collected French posters for many years, have generously established a major collection of these works at Susquehanna University for future study of this medium by students, scholars, and the general public.
Shadows of Time Photo-transfer Prints by Gordon R. Wenzel
March 19 - April 13, 1997
Untitled, Gordon R. Wenzel, Photo-transfer print on watercolor paper. 4 x 5"
Collection of the photographer.
Gordon R. Wenzel's photo-transfer prints have a monumentality that belies their diminutive scale. His images hint of the past with reflections of aging architecture and old world subjects, shadows of a time once held in esteem. Modesty of scale, however, in no way diminishes their effect; soft muted times melting into textural watercolor paper implore the viewer to move closer to inspect their intriguing appearance. Small size and faded colors are reminiscent of picture postcards of the past that were used to describe romantic faraway places and sentimental scenes of gardens and flowers. Collectibles of such papers ephemera are now found in antique shops and museums saved from extinction by loving hands. Wenzel's photographs remind us of such things.
Manipulating a technique that itself suggests melting and fading, Wenzel derives his images from his own negatives taken years ago and reworked in a transfer process with the assistance of Polaroid film. The nature of this film, layered on its surface with a spectrum of colors, when applied to dampened watercolor paper gives up its image to a new aesthetic medium. Colors impregnate the paper, sometimes sliding beyond the image into the margins mingling figure and background with an appearance of a French Impressionist's brushstroke.
Wenzel shares his techniques as well as his aesthetic ideas with students in the Art Department at Susquehanna University, where he teachers two classes of Photography. As a professional photographer in the community, he has worked in a variety of areas including commercial and portrait photography and has a studio in Danville, Pennsylvania. National awards in competitions have landed his work in various collections, including the Pennsylvania Heritage Affairs Commission Traveling Collection, for which he was recognized by the Lieutenant Governor.
American Regionalist Prints from the Robert U. Redpath Collection, Susquehanna University, Part 2:
The second part of the Robert U. Redpath Collection of American Regionalist Prints affords the Lore Degenstein audience an opportunity to view the collection in its entirety. A selection of these prints that had undergone conservation last spring were shown as a project of an American Art History course, involving the research efforts of those students. Their work has provided information on the gift of the work in 1977 by Redpath and the history of the Regionalist artists who printed lithographs and etchings for Associated American Artists (AAA) in the 1930s and 40s. The AAA, an organization in New York City, gave artists an experience to produce graphic arts that described American life: conditions in the aftermath of the Great Depression – during the Dustbowl years in rural America in the 1930s when farming struggled for survival and cities dealt with the crises of unemployment as well as later subjects of life recovering. Such prominent artists as Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood as strongly evident in the collection.
Seeing the Unseen Photographs by Harold E. Edgerton
Feb. 1 – March 2, 1997
Milk-Drop Coronet. Harold E. Edgerton. 1957.
Herold Edgerton was born in Fremont, Nebraska, in 1903, where his father was principal of the high school and coach of the football team. A few years after his birth, the family moved to Washington, D.C., where his father worked as a reporter for the Washington Times and studied law.
Washington, however, could not compete with the attractions of Nebraska. The family moved back—residing in Lincoln, on the Winnebago Indian Reservation, and finally in Aurora. At 14, Edgerton bought his first camera, a postcard folding model from a mail order catalog.
After receiving a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska, Edgerton spent a year with General Electric in Schenectady, New York. He then enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he won both a master's degree and a doctorate in electrical engineering. It was Edgerton's work in electrical measurements at MIT that first led him to investigate the stroboscope and the possibility of using it for photography.
During his doctoral studies, Edgerton needed to find a way to accurately measure the transient changes in the angular displacement of the rotor of a synchronous electric motor. With the stroboscopes then available, measurements had to be recorded visually, and it was difficult to capture with accuracy the transient changes in the turning rotors. To overcome the problem, Edgerton designed the first electronic stroboscope device that would produce enough light in controlled flashes of short duration and of proper actinic quality for "stopping motion" on photographic film. His success in developing this stroboscope, first described in the May 1931 issue of the journal, Electrical Engineering, led to his life-long work in high-speed photography.
Two other MIT graduates, Kenneth Germesshausen and Herbert E. Grier, who were to become Edgerton's business partners, made critical contributions in the early 1930's to further development of strobe systems. The pioneering research of these three men led to the realization of today's electronic flash camera. In 1947, the trio organized their informal partnership of thirteen years into a company which has successfully specialized in electronic technology applicable to space exploration, atomic physics, medicine, marine science, electro- optics, and sophisticated testing devices.
The industrial/corporate world held no charms for Edgerton, who by this time was affectionately called "Doc" by his students. Leaving the management of the burgeoning enterprise to his partners, he preferred to dedicate his time to his students and research. As his pioneering photographs stirred worldwide interest in strobe photography, Edgerton's MIT laboratory became a mecca for people who wished to learn his techniques or use his equipment for motion analysis. His stroboscope, in a convenient portable form, found wide use in industry for studying such things as the complexities of the automobile crankshaft, a high-speed loom's shuttle, or the meshing of gears.
During World War II, Edgerton developed a powerful flash system that was used for night aerial photography over Normandy in Europe. In the later years, Jacques Yves Cousteau, along with the National Geographic Society, enlisted his aid for underwater photography. Cousteau and the crew of the Calypsodubbed him "Papa Flash."
More recently Edgerton's inventions include the side -scan device used in the discovery of the ironclad USS Monitor, sunk off Cape Hatteras in 1862 by the Confederate ironclad Merrimac . Robert Ballard and the team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute found the wreck of the Titanic using Edgerton's side- scan sonar. "Nessie," the sea monster supposedly residing in the 700- foot-deep Loch Ness in Scotland, has been another subject of Edgerton's research using the side-scan sonar.
Edgerton, as a photographer, was first of all a scientist and an electrical engineer who investigated, measured, and sought new facts about natural phenomenon. His photographic genius, which he always down-played, has captured bullets in flight and athletes in motion; captured the detonation of atomic bombs at a hundred millionth of a second; and produced the renowned coronet picture of the drop of milk as it splattered into a saucer. His photographs, as scientific records, bestow on us comprehension and increase our awareness. They reveal the new forms, subtle relationships of time and space, and the essence of motion. He created a universal visual scientific language for all to appreciate--a unique image of that time world beyond the threshold of our eyes.
Edgerton received the nation's highest awards, including the Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science, the International Center for Photography's Lifetime Achievement Award, and the National Medal of Technology. His 1982 New England Inventor of the Year Award reads, "He has pressed back the frontiers of our knowledge of vision and motion with his stroboscopic photography and through his marvelous invention he has captured and revealed new beauty and order in both nature and industry,"--a marvelous citation for a person whose life work has so enriched our lives.
Stone Echoes Original prints by Françoise Gilot
Oct. 26 – Dec. 15, 1996
Diane (A Study for Titania). Françoise Gilot. Lithograph in five colors on Arches. 34.25 x 25.5"
The artistic career of Francoise Gilot, spanning the era of WWII to the present, brings to the realm of the lithographic print a vision both powerful and feminine. Her dedication to the medium had a reluctant beginning in her efforts to avoid the printmaking's provocative enticements, when Picasso introduced her to the French artistic milieu of the day, which included Matisse, Braque, Chagall, and Miro, Gilot discovered a natural affinity for lithography. She developed a vocabulary in the medium that brought her work to the attention of Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, a major art dealer who showed her work in his Parisian gallery in early 1952. She was only the second female artist whose work he handled. Gilot developed a "nourishing collaboration" with Mourlot - according to Mel Yoakum in his catalogue raisonne of her graphic works - printing at his atelier for many years.
Additional patronage arose in the United States in 1961 with the interest of Sylvan Cole, director of Associated American Artists. Cole commissioned an edition of her lithographs produced at Mourlot Atelier for distribution to an American market. With this sponsorship, Gilot was able to explore the medium's offerings with unguarded experimentation, discovering a vibrant approach to color that became the hallmark of her mature style. Her subsequent devotion to printmaking coincided with a phenomenal revival of the medium, both in America and Europe beginning in the 1960s.
Author of several books—Life With Picasso, The Painter and the Mask, Mattise and Picasso: A Friendship in Art—Gilot continues to work in her studios in California, New York, and Paris.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery is privileged to display a retrospective of Gilot's prints in an exhibition organized by the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pa. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue raisonne authored by Mel Yoakum, curator of the Gilot Archives.
Mark Rothko The Spirit of the Myth
Sept. 7 – Oct. 13, 1996
Untitled. Mark Rothko. Oil on canvas. 44.31 x 37.44"
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Gift of The Mark Rothko Foundation
Prominent for his contribution to American innovations in abstract art after World War II, Mark Rothko was one of the spearheads of the group of young artists known as "the New York School." Also called "Abstract Expressionists," they included Jackson Pollock, Adolph Gottlieb, Herbert Ferber, William de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and more than a dozen others who met regularly to exchange new ideas toward the development of abstract art. Theirs was more a movement than a style of painting and sculpture, focusing on ideas surrounding a new way of defining art. Motivated by the European surrealists who had emigrated to New York in the wake of political oppression in Nazi Germany in the late 1930's, the younger artists established a powerful wave of influence that literally "captured" the artworld away from its former center in Paris. As a result, America had established international importance in avante-garde art.
Rothko's role in the sweeping changes that followed is earmarked by his mature works, large paintings of soft-focus hovering rectangles, beginning with acid colors in the early 1950's and developing into somber maroons and blacks just before his self-inflicted death in 1970. Less familiar are his prior to this period as he was experiencing Surrealism on his own terms, experimenting with "automatism" and dream-like "biomorphic" imagery that was the crux of that movement. The notion of tapping into the subconscious for forms and modes of expression was in the air for him and his contemporaries and informs his paintings of the 1940's.
Earlier still are his works from the 1930's, figurative investigations of forms generated by Cubism and Expressionism of the post-World War I era. Assimilating the idea that all art of importance must be "tragic and timeless," Rothko, Newman, and Gottlieb, sent a declaration of this intent to the New York Times in 1943 - language which established the importance of myth as well as the essential fabric from which the new art world would be woven. Inspired also by Friedrich Nietzche's Birth of Tragedy, Rothko stated that mythology was meaningful to him, not for "the particular anecdote, but rather [for]...the Spirit of the Myth." This spirit was to become the hallmark of the artist's quest in the years to follow.
Rothko's family tradition originated in Dvinsk, Russia, where he was born in 1903. Emigrating to the United States in 1913, he spent his youth in Portland, Oregon, and later he studied at Yale University. He moved to New York in 1923 and began to study art at the Art Students League. His relationship with the young American avante-garde began in the early 1930's through opportunities to exhibit at the little galleries in New York willing to take a chance on emerging artists. His first New York exhibition was held in 1933 at the Contemporary Arts Gallery. Exhibiting at Peggy Guggenheim's Art of This Century Gallery in the mid 1940's placed him in the milieu of the Surrealists and the burgeoning New York School. Subsequent galleries, Betty Parsons, Sidney Janis, and Marlboro, handled his work in New York and provided him with annual solo exhibitions throughout his career.
The exhibition at the Lore Degenstein Gallery celebrates the early works of Mark Rothko with twenty-six paintings, a selection from 195 paintings and over 770 drawings donated to the National Gallery, Washington, D.C., in 1986 by The Mark Rothko Foundation. Organized by the National Lending Service, the loan is part of a program designed to make the National Gallery's collection more accessible to museums nationwide. It is our privilege to hold this special exhibition, the second such opportunity at Susquehanna University following the distinctive collection of North American Indian paintings by George Catlin held in 1995.
1995–96
Collections from the Lore Degenstein Permanent Collection
April 27 – June 2, 1996
The Prodigal Son. Thomas Hart Benton. Lithograph. 1939. 10.375 x 13.375"
One of the traditional benefits of allying an academic gallery with classes in Art History is the chance to spotlight certain objects with the ambitious research efforts of students who have culled from university records and published documents as much information as they could find. Susquehanna students in American Art History class, fall 1995, studied a collection of fine art prints that had been given to the university in the 1970s. A selection from among the forty-six prints is exhibited this spring along with accompanying material from the students' investigations.
The students discovered that Robert U. Redpath, a member of the university's Board of Directors at the time, in 1976 contributed his collection of lithographs and etchings produced by Associated American Artists. The AAA is a New York publisher of prominent artists, particularly during the 1940s and 1950s. Such American Regionalists as Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton and their colleagues provided a view of Americana reflective of the Depression and its aftermath. Themes of life activities from rural America describe narratives of hardship or leisure in these prints - statements of the persistence of the common place in the face of global economic and political crises.
In their process of studying the history of the prints, Art History students were joined with other students from the Gallery internship program to accession them into the university collection, photograph and catalog the art, and assess their need for conservation. The prints on exhibit have been recently restored with combined funding from the Lore Degenstein Gallery and the Blough-Weis Library. The remainder of the prints will receive conservation as future funds develop. It is the intention of this collection to be exhibited at the library for the continued benefits of their further study.
Land Survey 1970 - 1995: Paintings by Diane Burko
March 19 – April 21, 1996
Après-Midi. Diane Burko. Oil on canvas. 1990. 84 x 60"
Collection of Sueyun and Gene Locks.
To consider 20th Century landscape painting a refreshing new statement on an age-old tradition is to witness the breath of new life brought to the canvas by Diane Burko. Her stunningly voluptuous paintings of the landscapes of her travels over the past two decades enrich and confront her audience with a sense of the monumentality of nature both from her point of view and from the grand scale of her work. Reminiscent of the scale of salon-style presentations of the 19th century, Burko treats her subjects with the cold objectivity of a modernist's eye. Distancing herself from her motif, Burko made calculated studies of aerial perspectives photographed by her from a small plane chartered for expeditions over the mountains and canyons in the American West and other places she visited.
This intense commitment to objectify nature resulted in large, analytical paintings that portray an arid, crystalline landscape wherever she travelled. Burko eventually purged her paintings of their geological scrutiny in the mid 1980s as she brought her canvas closer to the site seeking in a warmer affinity with nature. Evidence of this treatment can be found in the small studies made at Philadelphia's Morris Arboretum in 1983 which appear to launch her landscapes in a new direction. For every trip she made through the countryside, Burko found fodder for her camera and her palette: the coasts of California, Brittany, Normandy - each trip resulting in new light and new colors for exploration. The canvases, transformed by bravura brushwork and buttery pigment, show the mature artist's authoritative confrontation of her subject. More recent paintings in the 1990s revisit the sites of earlier masters, the benefits of grants and fellowships that placed her on the European continent for an extended period. Such scenes as Monet's lily pond at Giverny describe a renewed affection for familiar sites while awakening traditions of landscapes past to transmutation by a modern realist.
Diane Burko maintains a studio in the Philadelphia environs. The exhibition of her more than twenty large paintings has been on tour to several college campuses in the East and was organized by the Payne Gallery of Moravian College in Bethlehem, PA.
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Diane Burko's Web site
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The Triumphant Spirit
Jan. 31 – March 3, 1996
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Fifty years after the end of World War II and the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, those who survived or were witnesses share a common cause: to resist prejudice and intolerance by keeping alive reminders of the Holocaust. Frequently noted among these people is a spirit of triumph over the adversities of their experience. Photojournalist Nick Del Calzo began a photographic series of Holocaust survivors' portraits inspired by his visit in 1991 to Dachau, a death camp near Munich. He found their stories told of ensuring hope for a better future, and, through their ability to transcend the unspeakable evil, their faces have become a metaphor for survival.
Del Calzo's photographs, assembled in an exhibition containing accounts of these experiences along with the portraits, will be shown at the Lore Degenstein Gallery. Funded in part by the Charles B. Degenstein Foundation, it is presented in conjunction with the Susquehanna University Holocaust-Genocide Studies Project.
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Seeking The Tranquil In Forest and Stream: Les Reker's Pennsylvania Landscapes
Oct. 29 – Dec. 15, 1995
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Lehigh River, Jim Thorpe, PA. Les Reker. Oil on canvas. 1991. 17 x 72"
Collection of the artist.
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The intimate realtionship with nature which Les Reker defines in his views of the Pennsylvania landscape emerges as the artist's search for tranquility. Though concerned with the essential of description, the paintings transcend verisimilitude, transporting the viewer to a feeling of place as well as a comprehension of the power of nature. Painted en plein air, on site, the paintings reflect the artist's philosophical encounter with the macrocosm as he maintains an adherence to the visual information before him.
A realist artist since his graduate school days at Queen's College, Reker has concentrated his attention on the close observation of nature as discussed by Emerson and Thoreau in the 19th century, whose impact on the tradition of American lanscape painting arose as the Hudson River School. Its artistic leader, Thomas Cole, left a legacy to the 20th century, favoring the particular and the specific over the visionary or the imaginary. In this tradition and spirit, Reker's landscapes make note of both the size and the feeling of their creation.
The paintings on view at the Lore Degenstein Gallery continue the gallery's commitment to artists who are affiliated with college art departments. Reker is Associate Professor of Art at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he also leads a substantive program of exhibitions as Director of the Payne Gallery, drawing upon art from museums and major collections. During his twelve years at Moravian, he has maintained his professional artistic productivity with a major New York gallery and is currently represented by a gallery in Philadelphia.
Reker's recent small-scale landscapes resulted from a series of paintings begun on his sabbatical leave in 1991. Exploring the cataracts and streams along the Susquehanna, Lehigh, and Delaware Rivers in Bucks, Lehigh, and Carbon Counties in Pennsylvania, Reker found through philosophical inquiry a new comprehension of the intuitive construction of the landscape when immersed in its presence. It is these small works nestled among the larger exhibition pieces that become the framework for an understanding of the commitment an artist may find in the association of experience and intellect. For the viewer there is pure delight - the familiar resonance of the forest and stream playing quiet harmonies in the paintings of Les Reker.
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Society of American Graphic Artists
Sept. 5 – Oct. 15, 1995
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The Lore Degenstein Gallery brings to the Susquehanna University community a selection of recent works of current members of the Society of American Graphic Artists. A not-for-profit national organization of fine art printmakers, the society originated in Brooklyn, NY, in 1915 as the "Brooklyn Society of Etchers." After undergoing several name changes, in 1952 it became the Society of American Graphic Artists. Founding members were Troy Kinney, Eugene Higgins, Fred Reynolds, Paul Roche, and Ernest Roth, the society's first president. The first exhibition was held in 1916 at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring 197 works by member artists adding John Taylor Arms, Frank W. Benson, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Marin, and Mahonri Young. The society continued to grow during the 1930s. Prominent members at that time included John Sloan and Reginald Marsh. The Society took on several new initiatives offering exhibit exchanges with European print clubs and a selection of miniature prints in its annual shows.
Over the past 80 years the society has organized over 65 national print exhibitions in addition to international, traveling, and exchange exhibitions. These exhibitions have presented various techniques and artistic styles which represent a cross-section of American printmaking. 63 original graphic works by 21 current members of the society are featured in this exhibition at the gallery, including etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and other print media. The exhibition was organized for the Thomas J. Walsh Gallery of Fairfield University located in Fairfield, Conn., where it appeared in late 1994.
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1994–95
Bradley W. Shoemaker: Recent Paintings
May 2 – June 4, 1995
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Porch Light. Bradley W. Shoemaker. Watercolor on paper. 1990. 21 x 28.5"
Collection of Catherine Bernabeo.
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Bradley W. Shoemaker’s paintings of Central Pennsylvania depict scenes reminiscent of the artist’s childhood and familiar to many of his viewers. Painting on location, Shoemaker documents structures and landscapes which are disappearing as the land is developed for new uses.
Shoemaker is a watercolorist, but his technique is closer to that traditionally associated with oil painting. He first builds layers of transparent washes before applying glazes. According to Shoemaker, “This slow build-up of color enhances the luminosity of the watercolor paper and results in an extraordinary warmth and richness of color.”
Shoemaker studied art at Penn State University receiving his master’s degree in 979 after a sojourn teaching art in a high school program in Beaver Springs, Pennsylvania. Preferring to paint rather than teach, he augmented his earlier experiences in studio art which included a summer arts program with Pennsylvania landscape painter David Armstrong and private lessons with former Susquehanna art professor Hilda Karniol. He currently works in his studio in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where he continues to interpret the local terrain.
The exhibition will contain 50 works on paper depicting various scenes from the Susquehanna Valley as well as a few from other locations including Martha’s Vineyard. The composition and technique of these paintings share many elements with works of the 20th-century American Realist painters. With these works, the viewer is able to gain a broader understanding of these artistic traditions and also to chare the artist’s interpretation of scenes which have a personal meaning for him.
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George Catlin's Paintings of North American Indians: 1855 - 1869
March 8 – April 26, 1995
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Catlin Painting the Portrait of Man-to-toh-pa-Mandan. George Catlin.
Oil on paperboard mounted on heavier paperboard. 1861/1869. 18.5 x 24"
Paul Mellon Collection 1965.16.184.
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Mandan, Sioux, Apache, Cheyenne, among countless other Native American tribes visited by Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, artist George Catlin, were studied over a period of thirty-four years in his life’s effort to preserve the “noble races of red men” who he recognized were fading from this earth. His paintings, based on field studies gathered from his travels, witness the appearance, activities, and tribal customs of families of peoples who granted him privilege to record them in their most private moments, occasionally even in their secret ceremonies.
Catlin defined his project as that of a preservationist, publishing his notes in 1841. Through both his verbal and visual voices, his legacy continues the lives of these aboriginal people into the present day. At the outset of his project, he wrote:
I have, for many past, contemplated the noble races of red men who are now spread over these trackless forests and boundless parries, melting away at the approach of civilization. Their rights invaded, their morals corrupted, their lands wrested from them, their customs changed, and therefore lost to the world,..I have flown to their rescue-not of their lives or of their race (for they are “doomed” and must perish), but to the rescue of their looks and their modes…; yet, phoenix-like, they may rise from the “stain on a painter’s palette,” and live once again upon canvass, and stand forth for centuries yet to come, the living monuments of a noble race. For this purpose, I have designed to visit every tribe of Indians on the Continent….
If I should live to accomplish my design, the result of my labors will doubtless be interesting to future ages; who will have little else left from which to judge of the original inhabitants of this simple race of beings, who require but a few years more of the march of civilization and death, to deprive them all of their native customs and character.
George Catlin, Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians, 1841
The Lore Degenstein Gallery is privileged to share with its Susquehanna community fifty Catlin paintings selected from the Paul Mellon Collection of over 350 works given to the National Gallery of Art in 1965. The assembled exhibition has toured college and university galleries around the U.S. for the last few years. A National Gallery catalogue, authored by Donna Mann describing the life and experiences of the artist, accompanies the exhibition.
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A Collector's Eye: Depression-Era Paintings from the Collection of John Horton
Feb. 1 – Feb. 26, 1995
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Apple Seller. Julius Bloch. Oil on canvas. 15 x 12"
Collection of John Horton. Courtesy of the Michener Museum of Art, Doylestown, PA
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John Horton, a resident of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has collected American art for twenty years. He began his collection with 19th-century landscape paintings. In the early 1980s, with the help of New York gallery owner, Samuel L. Rosenfield, he began to acquire American paintings from 1930s and 1940s.
Horton’s criteria for his acquisitions are works that show “vigorous” expression with animated compositions and forceful color contrasts and works that have themes concerned with the human condition, especially compassion for the oppressed, the unfortunate, and the unhappy. Particular favorites for him were paintings by the American Regionalists and Social Realists of the 1930s and 1940s.
The American Regionalists found their subject matter in the celebration of everyday life of rural America. Living and working in the country’s heartland, they passionately rejected the artistic domination of New York and other urban centers, and in their art glorified the life of the farmer and the small town.
In contrast, the Social Realists were urban artists and by far the more political of the two groups. The Social Realists focused on the indignities and injustices that were regularly faced by laborers and the urban poor. They were not afraid to take a frank look at the social ills of society and felt compelled to use their art for political expression.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery will show several paintings from these two movements as well as various works by artists that illustrated other paths taken by artists during the period. One of the paintings, Apple Seller by Julius Bloch, documents a common sight during the Great Depression of the 1930s: the destitute, unemployed people who tried to earn money selling such items as pencils and fruit on city streets.
We extend our appreciation to the Michener Museum of Art in Doylestown, PA, and to John Horton for the opportunity to display the paintings in this exhibition.
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The Pennsylvania Watercolor Society
Oct. 29 – Dec. 10, 1994
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The Lore Degenstein Gallery is please to host the Pennsylvania Watercolor Society’s 15th Juried Exhibition this year. The opportunities to view new directions in the medium of watercolor, through the work of artists from around the nation and abroad, helps us to fulfill our ongoing mission of contributing to the cultural life of the Susquehanna University community and our surrounding neighbors in Central Pennsylvania.
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Chronicles of the Pennsylvania Plain People: 18 Years of Photography by David A. Lauver and a Selection of Quilts That Color Their Homes
Sept. 17 – Oct. 16, 1994
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Amish Big Valley School, Back Mountain Road, Pennsylvania. David A. Lauver. Cibachrome. 14 x 20"
Collection of the artist.
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For almost two decades David A. Lauver has photographed the folkways and expressions of joy and determination that surround the Central Pennsylvania Amish and Old Order Mennonites. The primary focus of Lauver’s career has been the communities of “plain people”—so-called for their resistance to modern customs and dress—who live, work, and worship in Snyder, Union, Lancaster, and Mifflin Counties quietly making their presence little known. Since 1972 Lauver has documented the changes which continue to take place in these communities, particularly from the incursion of modern social concerns, the Pennsylvania highway system, electric power lines that intrude on their properties and the curiosity-seeking public.
Lauver’s interest in the plain people of Pennsylvania has a special dimension because he is a direct descendant of Jacob Lauver, the found of the Lauver Mennonite Church in Juniata County. Living with Amish and Mennonite families from 1978 to 1986, he had the opportunity to participate in their daily activities and gain insights about their lifestyles.
Careful not to exploit the people he photographs, Lauver has earned year of trust and respect which he invests into his art. He intends to dispel some of the myths surrounding the Amish community. One such myth is that the plain people do not allow their picture to be taken; although some sects prohibit photographs, others do not. Some allow themselves to be photographed from a distance or from behind, which children usually can be photographed without reservation.
Lauver’s sensitive depictions of the children of the plain people liberate their joyful spirit allowing them the ephemeral pleasures of vanity that will soon give way to more serious life obligations as they grow older. They cavort in the schoolyard, modeling for the camera and proudly displaying treasured artwork created by their own hands.
The exhibition will contain 50 photographs depicting various aspects of the lives of the plain people in Central Pennsylvania, including children, schools, adults, families, transportation, farming, worship, animals, domestic environments, etc. Sharing the spotlight is a sampling of colorful quilts, exquisitely crafted artful statements for which the Amish and Old Order Mennonites are so well known.
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1993–94
Joseph Priestley in America: 1794 - 1804
March 19th - May 15th, 1994
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Joseph Priestly. Rembrandt Peale. Oil on canvas. c. 1802. 26.25 x x30.375"
The Trout Gallery, Dickinson College.
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The Lore Degenstein Gallery at Susquehanna University in collaboration with the Trout Gallery at Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA, has organized a comprehensive exhibition entitled: Joseph Priestley in American: 1794-1804. The exhibition will focus on the American legacy of the scientist, humanist, theologian, philosopher, and political dissident, Joseph Priestley, celebrating the 200th anniversary of his arrival in America in 1794.
Priestley, who was born in Yorkshire, England in 1733, is best known for his discovery of oxygen in Leeds, England, announced on August 1, 1774. Priestley’s studies of gases, or “airs” as they were then known, led him to the discovery of other gases including nitrous oxide (“laughing gas”), ammonia, and a gas later identified as carbon monoxide. Priestley’s work also led to a technique for producing carbonated water.
Priestley was known not only for his scientific work, but for his work in philosophy, theology, and political theory. Ordained as a dissenting minister, he was one of the founders of the Unitarian movement in England. Priestley’s political theories, especially his support for the principles of the French Revolution, led to his being branded a political dissident. The controversy over his political views caused him to leave his home in Birmingham, England, where an outbreak of mob violence on the second anniversary of the French Revolution led to the burning of his house, laboratory, and library.
After his arrival here in 1794, Priestley settled in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, where he built a house and laboratory. He continued to perform scientific experiments but was hindered by difficulty in communicating with colleagues in England. Priestley’s interest in politics remained. He was friends with Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin. He also continued to pursue his literary and religious interests until his death in 1804.
The exhibition will contain many objects associated with Priestley’s life in America including portraits, drawings, prints, and sculptures as well as decorative arts, such as furnishings; scientific apparatus and publications; and documents. Prints and paintings depicting Priestley’s locale on the Susquehanna River in Northumberland and an exhibit of political prints of the time, including works by James Gillray will also be shown.
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Encountering the Narrative in the Recent Work of Florence Putterman
Nov. 20, 1993 – Feb. 20, 1994
Nov. 20, 1993 – Feb. 20, 1994
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Cast of Characters for War and Peace. Florence Putterman. Sand, crushed shells, and acrylic on canvas. 88 x 93"
Over the past few years, Florence Putterman’s vibrant paintings and monotypes have taken a new direction from her previous colorful abstractions and glyphic images created since the early 1970s. Her recent work is representational and seemingly autobiographical, comprised of familiar subjects—birds, humans, household animals—that appear to construct a narrative. On the surface, the narrative suggests an environment of feminine encounter with events from her life, but it simultaneously seems to provoke metaphorical messages of global magnitude which engages a personal interpretation from the viewer.
Monotypes, works on paper created as both unique and original graphic art, play a vital role in the process of Putterman’s painting. In her recent work, Putterman uses the monotype to reflect the narrative of her paintings—recast in new light with the encounter reinterpreted by a variety of individual treatments giver each print.
The Lore Degenstein Gallery’s current exhibition of thirty-four paintings, monotypes, and sculptures will explore these narrative elements in Putterman’s work, comparing her various approaches to the different media. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition.
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1992–93
The Lutheran Brotherhood Collection of Religious Art
April 28 – May 16, 1993
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The Holy Family in Egypt. Albert Durer. 1504.
In recent years, a growing number of corporations in America have been forming art collections. Lutheran Brotherhood has also embarked on such a program. In 1982, the Society began to assemble a significant collection of religious art consisting of prints and drawings by important Old and Modern Masters, including works by Durer, Cranach, Rembrandt, Tiepolo, Delacroix, Sargent and Bellows, among others. The collection, which currently consists of approximately 400 works, included pieces from the 15th through the 20th centuries.
The Lutheran Brotherhood Collection of Religious Art, from which selected works are included in this circulating exhibition, graphically depicts events in Judeo-Christian history as perceived by artists of many periods.
Because Lutheran Brotherhood has historical ties with Lutherans and the Lutheran Church, it seems fitting that the Collection should reflect this relationship in its religious content.
As the collection continues to grow, its objects will be to demonstrate Lutheran Brotherhood’s commitment to the cause of education and culture and to be a source of enjoyment and spiritual enrichment to its viewers.
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Walter Elmer Schofield: Proud Painter of Modest Lands
March 19 – April 18, 1993
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Summer Morning. Walter Schofield. Oil on linen. 1919. 20 x 24"
Collection of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art, Ursinus College.
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Trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, W. Elmer Schofield worked both in Pennsylvania and in Cornwall, England, during the first half of this century. Schofield's early Tonalist landscape paintings reflect an interest in the muted colors, misty, ethereal light, and soft-focused images. His brighter impressionist palette, adopted after 1903, prevailed throughout the remainder of his life emphasizing light greens and cobalt blues. In recent years, Schofield's work has been reconsidered for its prominence in the American landscape tradition.
On loan from the Philip and Muriel Museum of Art at Ursinus College, the exhibition has toured college and regional art galleries over the past four years accompanied by a scholarly catalogue by Valerie Livingston, Director of the Lore Degenstein Gallery. Other paintings in the exhibition are on loan from private collection and from the originator of the show, the Payne Gallery of Moravian College.
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