Film Director and Legendary Movie Star to Appear

At this Friday Films, March 4, 2011, VMFA will present film director Tim Reid with his guest Richard Roundtree showing Reid’s 1996 motion picture directorial debut, Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored, in which Roundtree plays the sturdy ice man, Cleve. Afterwards they will be joined by Tim’s lovely wife, actress Daphne Maxwell Reid, to give insight and Q&A about the movie.

Once Upon a Time…When We Were Colored is a beautiful and evocative depiction of a 1940s-1950s African American community in Mississippi. The complex weaving of several characters stories together with elegance and warmth elevates this movie to a truly rewarding experience for all.

Most any sharp student of pop culture knows who Richard Roundtree is but, in case you missed the bus, he had the dream role in the hippest movie of 1970, SHAFT. The Gordon Parks directed film has come down the ages as a fixture in Americana. Roundtree was chosen to play John Shaft because he was perfect for the hippest, coolest, baddest private eye in Manhattan comparable to Sean Connery’s absolute quintessential James Bond portrayal. The equally legendary Isaac Hayes won the Oscar that year for the theme music.

Join us for a once in a lifetime night! http://www.vmfa.museum/FridayFilms/


- Trent Nicholas, VMFA Coordinator of Statewide Media Resources

photo. Tim Reid (Millennium Studios, 2011).

Claude

“The finest landscape etching in the world.”

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts discussing highlights of the exhibition A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection currently on display in VMFA’s Mellon Focus Galleries. Admission to this exhibition is free.

Claude Lorrain is best known today as a painter of austerely beautiful classical landscapes. However, he was also active as an etcher, particularly in his early years before his rise to fame. Here he shows a gentler side as a pastoral poet of nature. The subtle lighting effects he was best known for are especially evident in this highly nuanced print.

According to Philip George Hamerton, the 19th century print historian, Claude Lorrain’s The Cowherd was “For technical quality of a certain delicate kind …the finest landscape-etching in the world” In Hamerton’s opinion “One merit of [Claude Lorrain] is not common in his modern successors - the extreme modesty of his style. No etcher was ever less anxious to produce an impression of cleverness and his only object seems to have been the simple rendering of his ideas. He sincerely loved beauty and grace and tried innocently for these till his touch became gentler than that of a child's fingers yet so accomplished that the stubborn copper was caressed as it were into a willing obedience.”

Please come see this subtle and beautiful etching for yourselves – and let me know via blogback if you agree with Hamerton…

Dr. Mitchell Merling
Paul Mellon Curator / Head of the Department of European Art


Illustration: Claude Lorrain (French, 1604–1682), The Cowherd, 1636, Etching, Promised Gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.8

Achieving Gradations in Etching and Drypoint

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts discussing highlights of the exhibition A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection http://vmfa.museum/Exhibitions/A-Celebration-of-Print/ currently on display in VMFA’s Mellon Focus Galleries. Admission to this exhibition is free. In this post collector and donor Frank Raysor contributes to our knowledge of the various techniques in the exhibition

My collection has many examples of the various printmaking methods that have been used by artists over the centuries. But it also contains within those defined techniques, different approaches that produce dramatically different visual results. These distinctions can be found among both etchings and drypoints.

Stopping-out involves covering over with protection, lines that are intended to be lighter, like the background of a landscape, and then subjecting the plate to further acid baths to strengthen the lines that the artist wants to be darker.

A perfect example of this is the Ruisdael, which was probably treated with only two acid applications - one for the background, which was then "stopped out," and a further one for the foreground, which has the visibly stronger lines. Such a simple approach could be almost child-like in other compositions, but here is works well, because the emphasis in on the tree. By contrast, Hollar's "Prague" must have had numerous stoppings-out, because the gradations among lines in the fore-, middle- and backgrounds are very nuanced, and it's impossible to tell how many acid treatments were applied. For other examples of skillful stopping-out, consider the Claude, the Kolbe, any of the Bracquemonds or Meryons, and the Corot (where we know that Bracquemond assisted his friend Corot with the biting). Finally, for a example of an effective etching that did not involved stopping-out at all, examine the Blaine, where all the lines are of equal weight.

In drypoint, where acid is not employed, similar effects can be achieved by the artist's use of different pressures of the tool upon the metal, to create deeper or shallower lines. Good examples of superb drypoint skills are found in Haden's "By-Road," Bone's "Building," and especially in the Cameron. By contrast, the Avery displays equally strong drypoint lines, because the artist wanted a flat aspect to this modernist composition.

--Frank Raysor, guest blogger

Illustrations:

Jacob van Ruisdael (Dutch, 1628/1629-1682), The Great Beech, with Two Men and a Dog, ca. 1651-55, Etching, Promised Gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.12

Nell Blaine (American, born Richmond, Virginia, 1922-1996), Window Still Life, 1986, Etching, Promised Gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.78

The power of line

This is the third in a series of blog posts discussing highlights of the exhibition A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection currently on display in VMFA’s Mellon Focus Galleries. Admission to this exhibition is free.

One of the pleasures of A Celebration of Print http://vmfa.museum/Exhibitions/A-Celebration-of-Print is the wide range of style and subject matter. Each work of art in the exhibition, which covers 500 years, has the power to move the visitor, but some works are especially striking.

This is certainly the case with Henri Matisse’s Madonna and Child from around 1949-51. Connected to a series of studies for murals and decorations Matisse made for the Chapel of the Rosary in the French Riviera town of Vence http://www.ville-vence.fr/the-rosaire-chapel?lang=fr, Matisse transcended the historical subject of the Virgin and Child to create a timeless expression of a mother’s love. Though he was best known for his vivid use of color in his paintings, Matisse, with only a single exception, produced black-and-white prints throughout his career. In this radically simplified composition, Matisse has synthesized the forms to their most basic linear qualities.

To appreciate Matisse’s radicalism, it helps to look back at the comparison I made in previous blog posts between the early German Christ as the Man of Sorrows  and Dürer’s Christ Crowned with Thorns  Dürer’s innovation in that work consisted in using the engraver’s line to add volume and mass to his depiction of the suffering Christ. He thus eschewed the language of powerful simplicity of the early German work. Though it is doubtful Matisse had in mind early woodcuts when producing his lithograph, both works share a belief in the power of line to convey visual and emotional truth.

--Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator/Head of the Department of European Art

Full caption: Henri Matisse (French, 1869–1954) Madonna and Child, ca. 1949–51, Lithograph, Promised Gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.44

A giant leap forward

This is the second in a series of blog posts discussing highlights of the exhibition A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection currently on display in VMFA’s Mellon Focus Galleries. Admission to this exhibition is free.



Christ Crowned with Thorns

One of the great pleasures of A Celebration of Print is that the exhibition’s range over 500 years makes possible comparisons between various epochs and different media.  One such dramatic and momentous contrast is that between the early German woodcut discussed in my previous post and this image: Albrecht Dürer’s Christ Crowned with Thorns.


Dürer was the greatest virtuoso artist of the Northern Renaissance, and the greatest printmaker of the 16^th century. He excelled in painting and drawing as well as printmaking and was an accomplished theoretician. This tiny (4 9/16” x 2 7/8”) plate from his Engraved Passion series shows the artist’s superb ability to delineate narrative and emotion. Note that Dürer shows Christ’s tormentors in contemporary dress, thus conveying to his audience the urgent relevance of Christ’s sacrifice.

Here, Dürer demonstrates his astonishing talent in engraving: a much more demanding medium than woodcut. More surprising is his mastery of anatomy and the history of art - the body of the tormented Christ is based on the ancient prototype of the Belvedere Torso http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belvedere_Torso.

Such sophistication must not have been easy to accomplish and is worlds away from the visual language of the early woodcut. Come admire the difference for yourself – the two works are installed in close proximity in the gallery.

But stay tuned here, my next blog post might surprise you!

-- Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Curator of European Art

Full caption: Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471–1528), Christ Crowned with Thorns, from The Engraved Passion, 1512, Engraving, Promised Gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.2

Powerful Prints

This is the first in a series of blog posts discussing highlights of the exhibition A Celebration of Print: 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection currently on display in VMFA’s Mellon Focus Galleries. Admission to this exhibition is free.


Christ as Man of Sorrows

The Frank Raysor collection spans 500 years, from the late 15th to the early 21st centuries. This is the earliest item in the collection and it inspires me with its simplicity and earnestness.
 

Religious woodcuts were among the earliest printed communications in Europe. Meant to inspire popular devotion, these sometimes crude-seeming artworks often reach to the very core of faith. Here we are not presented with the narrative of Christ’s Crucifixion but rather his embodiment of man’s pain and suffering. Such humble yet heartfelt efforts were soon superseded in artfulness by Dürer and others – yet they still have the power to move emotionally and aesthetically.

This is the first in a series of posts where I hope to cover some of my favorite images from the exhibition A Celebration of Print – 500 Years of Graphic Art from the Frank Raysor Collection, now on view in the Mellon Focus Galleries and free of charge.

--Mitchell Merling, Paul Mellon Curator and Head of the European Art Department

Full caption:

Christ as Man of Sorrows, (German), late 15th century woodcut. Promised gift of Frank Raysor, L.139.2010.1