STUDIO-ONLINE

Theo Jansen, Animaris Percipiere Primus, 2005. Photo: Kevin Kennefick

The surprising works displayed in this exhibit include meticulously crafted animals that move on their own, healing machines that exude beneficial energy, love-filled performances and statues that honor past and present deities. With their deeply-held personal truths, the “believers,” the artists who dare to believe in order to create, courageously defy skepticism, irony and, often, reason.

In their works, the artists contemplate some of the most fundamental questions that have long captivated philosophers, scientists and spiritualists, from the nature of matter, the possibility of immortality and the elements of identity, to the dynamics of human interaction, the limits of physical capacity and the power of the human mind.

Among the Believers are Bas Jan Aders, the Icelandic Love Corporation (ILC), Yoshua Okón and Fritz Haeg, CarianaCarianne, Sister Mary Corita, Erkki Kurenniemi, Jonathan Meese and former hobo Emery Blagdon, who created the healing machines.

Selections from The Believers will be on view through December 2007.

MASS MoCA
87 Marshall Street
Building 4, Second floor
North Adams, MA
Telephone: (413) 662-2111
Web site: http://www.massmoca.org

Clothing, accessories and textiles from the collection of the Charleston Museum are on view in a year-long exhibit, Clothes to Dye For, which examines color symbolism and color theory. The show unravels the history of dyeing and illuminates the role of Eliza Lucas Pinckney and the importance of indigo to the Lowcountry; the Spanish introduction to Europe of tiny South American cochineal insects full of red dye; and dangerous concoctions such as Scheeles’s green, a lightfast dye that is extremely poisonous to dyer and wearer.

Sections of the exhibit are devoted to specific colors and have sparked a series of special color-related events. For more information, visit: www.charlestonmuseum.org

Charleston Museum
360 Meeting St.
Charleston, SC
Telephone: (843) 722-2996
Web site: www.charlestonmuseum.org

Sally Agee, San Francisco, 2003

Artists’ sketchbooks offer a birds-eye view of the creative imagination, uncensored and unarranged for public viewing. These visual diaries of the events and experiences that have impressed particular women artists from the 18th century to today contain fascinating biographical details. The show includes 21 works by 14 artists (Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg, Elisabeth Vigee-Lebrun, Irene Rice Pereira among them) from the U.S., Argentina and Spain.

National Museum of Women in the Arts
1250 New York Ave., N.W.
Washington, DC 200005
Telephone: (800) 222-7272
Web site: www.nmwa.org

In Japan, garments have been woven from threads of paper; undergarments patterned with images of ghosts; and women’s obi’s decorated with military motifs. These are just some highlights of this exhibit, which features 23 examples of Japanese textiles from the collection of guest curator Valerie Foley.

The show explores weaving and dyeing techniques; methods and symbolism of surface decoration; and the ways in which Japanese textiles figure into daily life and rituals in Japan. Foley’s collection includes traditional costumes, fisherman’s clothing, banners used for the annual Boys’ Day celebration, bedding, horse trappings and men’s and women’s kimonos.

Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens
4000 Morikami Park Road
Delray Beach, Fl
Telephone: (561) 495-0233
Web site: www.morikami.org

For its 2007 Biennial, the Portland Museum of Art selected 98 works by 61 artists from a total of 920 entries.

The annual event celebrates contemporary visual art by the state’s artists and highlights works that reflect Maine’s landscape, traditions and culture. Featured artistists include natives, part-time residents and recent graduates of art schools located in Maine. A full-color catalogue accompanies the show.

Portland Museum of Art
Seven Congress Square
Portland, ME 04101
Telephone: (207) 775-6148
Web site: www.portlandmuseum.org

Rafael Montañez Ortíz
Archaeological Find #3, 1961
Burned mattress destruction on wooden backing
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
Gift of Constance Kane, 1963

Raphael Montañez Ortíz wrote his first Destructivism manifesto in 1962. Subsequently, three themes have pervaded his works throughout his career: dualities, transcendence and ritual.

Born in New York in 1953, Ortiz made his mark in the art world in the late 1950s as one of the central figures in destructivism, an international reaction to the social detachment of the postwar avant-garde. In 1969, Ortiz co-founded El Museo del Barrio, the first Latino art museum in the U.S. His works include painting, sculpture, installation, film and performance. Although he and his works were prominent through the 1960s, after that his activities became obscured by other movements.

This retrospective includes works from 1970s to the present and redresses the artist’s continued relevance to art history and for the twenty-first century.

Jersey City Museum
80 Grand St.
Jersey City, NJ 07302
Telephone: (201) 332-5200
Web site: www.jerseycitymuseum.org

Matthew Sloly, CAD drawing, 2006
Courtesy the artist

Five artists explore the notion of transposing history from the present to the past and into the future in a large-scale installation inspired by a massive work made in 1938 by modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957).

Brancusi’s “Endless Column” is an outdoor sculpture in Târgu Jiu, Romania, consisting of a 100-foot tall series of cast-iron rhombus shapes, resembling a stylized version of a traditional Romanian funerary pillar. In angling the vertical modules through the Studio Museum’s galleries—four of them penetrate through from floor to ceiling—the five contemporary artists redefine space and time and also recall the imagined flight of Brancusi’s classic “Bird in Space” series.

An introductory video features music composed by Sun Ra (1914-1993), the Alabama-born musician, poet and philosopher who pioneeered the concept of Afrofuturism and came to be known for his “cosmic philosophy,” in which he claimed to be of an “angel race” from Saturn.

The five artists who participated in the project, Edgar Arceneaux, Vincent Galen Johnson, Olga Koumoundouros, Rodney McMillian and Matthew Sloly, studied together at CalArts.

The Studio Museum, Harlem
144 East 125th St.
New York, NY 10027
Telephone: (212) 864-4500
Web site: www.studiomuseum.org

Louis H. Sullivan. Plate 14: Fantasy, a Study of Curves in Three Dimensions from A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosohpy of Man’s Powers, 1922–23. Commissioned by the Art Institute of Chicago.

For the 150th anniversary of Louis Sullivan’s (1856-1924) birth, the Art Institute of Chicago is highlighting the architect’s A System of Architectural Ornament, which was commissioned by the institute’s Burnham Library of Architecture and produced by the architect in 1922 and 1923.

Sullivan studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later developed his indelible architectural style based on a commitment to reconciling nature with science and technology.
The drawings on view offer a window onto Sullivan’s interpretation of the philosophical principles of ornament and its relationship to architecture and the natural world. Ornament, Sullivan believed, was a link between natural forms and the practical and rational aspects of building design.

Art Institute of Chicago
111 South Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL
Telephone: (312) 443-3600
Web site: www.artic.edu

Salvador Dalí and Edward James
Mae West Lips Sofa, 1938
Wood carcass, upholstered in satin
86.5 x 183 x 81.5 cm.
The Trustees of The Edward James Foundation
Copyright © Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, DACS, London 2007

Surrealist imagery, conjured from dreams, continues to be a deep source of inspiration. This exhibit includes 300 works that explore the impact of surrealism on fashion, interior design, architecture, theater, film, graphic art and advertisng.

From the expected (paintings by Magritte, Dali and Ernst) to the surprising (Elsa Schiaparelli’s “Skeleton dress,” Meret Oppenheim’s “Table with Bird’s Legs” and Oscar Dominguez’s satin-lined wheelbarrow), this show offers a more direct view into how the vast world of the unconscious manifests in artistic creation. Other highlights of the show are the dream sequence from Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound, and a case study of Monkton, the purple-painted Sussex home of the English Surrealist patron Edward James.

Victoria & Albert Museum
Cromwell Road
London, England
Telephone: (44) 020 7942 2000
Web site: www.vam.ac.uk

Hardware-store entrepreneur John Hechinger formed a large and impressive contemporary art collection, which now consists of more than 375 works by 259 well-known and emerging artists, dating mainly from the post-World War II era.

“Tools as Art” demonstrates that tools can function as symbols of artistry as well as utility. Visitors will be surprised and charmed by this show, which showcases many works from Hechinger’s collection. Such diverse artists as as Red Grooms, Jim Dine, Walker Evans and Fernand Leger have incorporated the imagery of tools and hardware in their works in a variety of media.

The first work in Hechinger’s collection was Dine’s “Tool Box,” a suite of silkscreen prints. From there, Hechinger collected paintings, sculptures, works on paper, photographs and craft objects. The works were displayed in the Hechinger Company headquarers in Landover, MD, until 1998, when he made them available to the public. (The company was founded in 1911 by Hechinger’s father.)

San Francisco Museum of Craft+Design
550 Sutter St.
San Francisco, CA 94102
Telephone: (415) 773-0303
Web site: www.sfmcd.com