The Nasher Magazine Fall 2016 by Nasher Sculpture Center

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

THE NASHER FA L L 2016 / M E M B ER S â&#x20AC;&#x2122; M A G A Z I N E

“WHEN YOU BEGIN TO SEE ALL OF THESE INFLUENCES, YOU SOMEHOW START THINKING OF THE ARTWORK AS A COLLECTIVE SPACE.” – K AT H RY N A N D R E W S

and disparate narratives and conventions that have always underpinned American political campaigns and helped fill out the toolbox of political persuasion. Politics, no doubt, can be a noble preoccupation, the means by which great causes are advanced and deep divisions settled. And yet, Andrews suggests, the visual language of politics is rife with paradox and contradiction, with only the finest line separating high purpose and low humor. Sightings: Michael Dean makes no such explicit reference to politics--and certainly not to American electoral campaigns. Dean’s work, rather, whether in his cast concrete sculptures, his publications, or his performances, aims to get at an inherent challenge to all discourse, political or otherwise: the gap between the desire to communicate and the limitations of any means of communication. While his sculptures may suggest forms—perhaps letters, perhaps bodies or parts of bodies, perhaps fragmentary found objects—these forms are always inchoate and incomplete, yet expressive of a powerful longing. That longing is a product of the desire for, and necessary failure of, communication. The shifting signs and multifarious images of political communication that Kathryn Andrews so deftly lays out can be seen as a vivid and extreme instance of a human condition described by Michael Dean.

As this issue of The Nasher goes to press, America’s presidential campaign is in full swing. And while by this stage of the quadrennial exercise, with its cavalcade of images, assertions, and accusations, it might seem that little more of value can be added to the conversation, the Nasher Sculpture Center’s two fall exhibitions each offer--one explicitly, one implicitly--some perspective on the political process. Art is, of course, no stranger to politics. Many artists use their work to address social concerns, and some make work directly in support of partisan causes. Such work, typically, functions more to reinforce those already confirmed in their positions than to sway those wavering or undecided. But political persuasion itself is sometimes referred to as an art, and so visual art might provide one means to consider how that persuasion operates.

POLITICAL PERSUASION ITSELF IS SOMETIMES REFERRED TO AS AN ART, AND SO VISUAL ART MIGHT PROVIDE ONE MEANS TO CONSIDER HOW THAT PERSUASION OPERATES.

Kathryn Andrews: Run for President looks back at more than 160 years of American history, picking out images from presidential campaigns both real and farcical, images of political figures intertwined (literally) with entertainmentworld celebrities, and icons of authority and buffoonery. Of course, the potential supply of such imagery is overwhelmingly vast, and Andrews’ choice is far from exhaustive. Rather, by bringing together a select group of distinct and diverse images, and creating a series of interconnected tableaux, Andrews suggests the strange

Now despite these musings, I sympathize with those of you who wish only for this political season to be over, and need no further reminders of political discord and debate. And for those, fall at the Nasher offers many attractions: ‘til Midnight programs on September 16 and October 21 featuring great local bands and classic movies screened in our garden, and a Soundings concert in December that adventurously combines music of Richard Wagner, Erwin Schulhoff, and Steve Reich. New to the Nasher this season is a film program, presented in partnership with the Paris-based nonprofit Light Cone and the University of Texas at Dallas’ School of Art, Technology, and Emerging Communication (ATEC), that explores the relationship between music and experimental cinema. That series, Ultra-Seeing, kicks off Sunday, September 11, at 2 pm, and will continue every month thereafter through May. Our innovative Gallery Lab series continues this fall with discussions and activities that run the gamut from the use of props and backdrops, to the insights science can bring to art, to balloon blowing (really). And in addition to our roster of 360: Artists, Critics, Curators guest speakers, this fall we’ll present our annual Nasher Lecture, in collaboration with the University of North Texas, Denton, welcoming prominent artist Sarah Sze. So much to enjoy, so much to contemplate. A full season at the Nasher Sculpture Center. See you here!

Jeremy Strick Director

THE NASHER FA L L 2016 / M EM B ER S ’ M AG A Z I N E

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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Kathryn Andrews: Run for President Sightings: Michael Dean

FALL EXHIBITION EVENTS

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS Richard Serra Prints Paper Into Sculpture

20 24

ACQUISITIONS

IN THE ARCHIVE Stiftung Arp, Berlin

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER EDITIONS

NASHER PRIZE 2017

MICROGRANTS

INTERVIEW WITH CAROL ZOU OF TRANS.LATION

KATHRYN ANDREWS & NAN COULTER LOS ANGELES

JOEL SHAPIRO’S WAXAHACHIE WHIRL

LEARN So You Want to Be a Curator? Summer Learning: Top 5 Moments Target First Saturdays: Ask a Librarian Family Art Adventure: Kathryn Andrews Sculpture Interventions Class Is in Session 360 Speaker Series Gallery Lab

ENGAGE Soundings 2016/17 Season ‘til Midnight at the Nasher UTD Film Series: Ultra-Seeing Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Lecture Series Dallas Design Symposium: Material Design

NASHER COLLECTION

74 MEMBERSHIP & SUPPORT Snapshots Patron Travel Patron Membership Member Events Volunteer Spotlight The Great Create Funder Spotlight: The Henry Moore Foundation Nasher Love

S P EC I A L C O N T R I BU TO R S

ROB BRINKLEY is a writer and editor based in Dallas. He has written for Esquire, Elle Decor, Architectural Digest, Veranda, Neiman Marcus, Highland Park Village, and Bergdorf Goodman. He was the co-editor of PaperCity magazine and the editorin-chief of FD, the style magazine of The Dallas Morning News.

ELIZABETH COLLETT is a sophomore at the University of Virginia. She is currently double majoring in art history and art administration. She worked this past summer at the Nasher Sculpture Center as an external affairs Intern. In Charlottesville, she is a docent at the Fralin Museum of Art and a tutor for prisoners at the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

NAN COULTER is a photographer based in Dallas and contributing arts editor at the Dallas Morning News. She is at work on a project researching prisons in Texas and Pennsylvania.

LEE ESCOBEDO is an art critic and writer for Berlin Art Link, Glasstire, Arts & Culture, Patron Magazine, and The Dallas Morning News. He is also founder and co-host of “What is Cinema?,” a cinema podcast funded by two exclusive grants from the City of Dallas to connect Dallas youth to the cultural and arts institutions of the city.

CHRISTOPHER MOSELY was born at Parkland Hospital in the 1980s. He has written about the arts for the Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, and FD Magazine — often with a heavy focus on music. A somewhat random conversation with Kurt Vonnegut at an all-girls school before he could drink heavily influenced his trajectory. He has lived in Austin, Dallas, and Los Angeles. He currently works for a West Coast artist management company called Echo Park Records.

LAUREN SMART is the managing editor of Arts & Culture Texas and she teaches arts journalism at Southern Methodist University.

ALLISON V. SMITH has been a freelance photographer for editorial clients such as The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and Le Monde Magazine. She is also a fine art photographer with projects that include exploring the landscape and personality of Marfa, Texas and Rockport, Maine. She is represented by Barry Whistler Gallery in Dallas and Hiram Butler Gallery in Houston.

ALLEN TSAI is a destination wedding photographer based in Dallas, Texas and has photographed weddings around the world as far as Mexico, Taiwan, and Thailand. He has a balance of a fine art approach while also capturing authentic emotions and natural expressions with a light and airy whimsical style.

BENJAMIN VEGA will be a junior at Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He is a pho enthusiast, on level 18 of Pokémon Go and Merida is his favorite Disney princess.

AVI VARMA is an artist, curator, and former advanced student of La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela in art, composition, and North Indian classical music. Since relocating to Dallas, he has been assisting the curatorial department at the Nasher.

KAREN WEINER is the founder and director of The Reading Room, a project space in Dallas dedicated to investigating the relationships between text and image. She is also an independent curator, and recently programmed 24 Hour Book Swap for Piero Golia’s Chalet Dallas at the Nasher Sculpture Center.

Installation view, Kathryn Andrews: Run for President, MCA Chicago Nov 21, 2015â&#x20AC;&#x201D;May 8, 2016. Work shown: Kathryn Andrews (American, born 1973), Lethal Weapon, 2012, stainless steel, paint, and certified film prop, 76 x 36 x 36 in. (193 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm). Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Photo: Nathan Keay, ÂŠ MCA Chicago

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

KATHRYN ANDREWS RUN FOR PRESIDENT SEPTEMBER 10, 2016 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; JANUARY 8, 2017

KATHRYN ANDREWS RUN FOR PRESIDENT SEPTEMBER 10, 2016 – JANUARY 8, 2017

How do image producers—such as artists, corporations, Hollywood studios, and politicians—employ visual cues and tools to elicit desire for their goods? This is the central question of Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews’ exhibition Run for President. Through the use of documentary photographs, paintings, sculpture, and found objects, Andrews explores the authority of images and how meanings rely on their context, and what we as viewers bring to the encounter. Weaving together narratives around historic and imaginary candidates, the campaign trail, sitting in office, and the end of the presidential term, Andrews’ exhibition is particularly apt for addressing the sociopolitical climate of a farcical election year. Andrews (American, born 1973) is best known for work combining found objects, historic images, and references to movements such as Pop Art, Minimalism, and Finish Fetish. Run for President comprises a cross-section of works Andrews made in the past six years that are each concerned with aspects of celebrity, popular culture, and image producing. For Andrews, the White House—as the ultimate symbol of power in the U.S.— provides an apt framework for objects and images that reveal the commingling of politics and celebrity. Run for President features a selection of recognizable individuals, images, and icons all carefully chosen for their known and unknown relationships to the White House. Sammy Davis Jr., Richard Nixon, Nancy Reagan, and Mr. T. all feature prominently in photomurals, along with paintings and sculptures of historical presidential candidates, such as General Zachary Taylor and General W.S. Hancock, and characters from U.S. history and popular culture, such as Bozo the Clown, the McDonald’s Captain Crook, and the image of the American hobo. A large-scale photomural of President Richard Nixon and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. brings to the fore a variety of concerns and ideas about the relationships between politics, celebrity, and power. At age 7 Davis made his acting debut in a 1933 race film called Rufus Jones for President. In the

musical, rife with racial stereotypes, Davis’ character Rufus Jones is elected president of the United States, only to find out by the film’s end that he was dreaming. Forty years later, Davis made history as one of the first African Americans to spend the night in the White House as an overnight guest. Politicians and other image-makers frequently capitalize on the phenomenon of fame by asking celebrities to lend their image to a cause. In aligning himself with Davis, Nixon was no doubt hoping to court the black vote—behavior criticized at the time for its blatancy as a hollow political gesture. Likewise, the inclusion of Bozo the Clown’s image, featured in three sculptures and a large photomural, addresses similar concerns about celebrity and an unlikely quest for the White House. On May 1, 1984, Bozo the Clown launched a campaign for president of the United States. That afternoon he arrived at Columbia University and made the formal announcement of his candidacy dressed in full makeup and costume amid a throng of “Secret Service” men wearing suits and red clown noses and a performance by the college punk band Nasty. Bozo described his decision to run for president as a response to media calls to “put the real Bozo in the White House.” Andrews’ pairing of recognizable, if disparate, images and objects has become a trademark in her recent work. Her 2013 sculpture Coming to America (Filet-O-Fish), comprising a McDonald’s playground sculpture of the pirate character Captain Crook with two silver coins (movie props from the film Coming to America) inserted into the ends of stainlesssteel tubes, successfully merges ideas of imperialism, McDonald’s, Pop, and Minimalism to address complex, interrelated issues of class, displacement, and the American Dream, along with the promise and impossibility of individual mobility as a both real and unattainable phenomenon. In the film the central character Akeem (played by Eddie Murphy) is the prince of the fictional African nation Zamunda. Before ascending the throne, Akeem has a crisis of conscience and travels to Queens, New York to find a wife who will love

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS Installation view, Kathryn Andrews: Run for President, MCA Chicago Nov 21, 2015—May 8, 2016. Kathryn Andrews (American, born 1973), Coming to America (Filet-O-Fish), 2013, stainless steel, paint, found object, and certified film props, 104 1/4 x 54 x 43 in. (264.8 x 137.2 x 109.2 cm). Rheingold Collection, Dusseldorf, Germany. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Installation view, Kathryn Andrews: Run for President, MCA Chicago Nov 21, 2015—May 8, 2016. Work shown (from left to right): Kathryn Andrews (American, born 1973), “Bozo” TM “The World’s Most Famous Clown” Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Blue Variation), 2014. Aluminum, vinyl, polyurethane, chrome-plated steel, and performance, 92 x 36 x 36 in. (233.7 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm). Collection of Julie Miyoshi, Santa Monica; “Bozo” TM “The World’s Most Famous Clown” Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Black Variation), 2014. Aluminum, vinyl, polyurethane, chrome-plated steel, and performance,92 x 36 x 36 in. (233.7 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm). Hesta Collection, Switzerland; “Bozo” TM “The World’s Most Famous Clown” Bop Bag with Occasional Performance (Pink Variation), 2014, Aluminum, vinyl, polyurethane, chrome-plated steel, and performance, 92 x 36 x 36 in. (233.7 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm). Private Collection. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

him for the man he is, and not the power he holds. The sculpture makes a direct connection between McDonald’s and “McDowell’s”—the fast-food restaurant in the movie where Prince Akeem finally finds his wife. In the context of Run for President, the sculpture takes on additional meaning related to U.S. power and politics as an oblique reference to Nixon’s famous 1973 comment in denial of his involvement in the Watergate scandal, where he proclaimed: “I am not a crook.” The exhibition originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and, in collaboration with the artist, has been reconfigured as a site-specific installation in the Nasher galleries, incorporating works from the original exhibition, such as the large-scale, documentary photomurals and meticulously produced sculptural works, within the unique architecture of the Nasher. As installed in the Nasher, Andrews’ objects, wall-bound sculptures and images, develop new relationships among one another and take on new meanings. In addition to Run for President, Kathryn Andrews has made a selection of works from the Nasher’s permanent collection to be on view in the adjacent gallery, revealing connections between her work and objects in the Nasher Collection.

Kathryn Andrews: Run for President is organized by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Generous support for Kathryn Andrews: Run for President is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris: Caryn and King Harris, Katherine Harris, Toni and Ron Paul, Pam and Joe Szokol, Linda and Bill Friend, and Stephanie and John Harris; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; the Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal Exhibition Fund; Christen and Derek Wilson; the Pamela Alper Curatorial Fund; Rodney Lubeznik and Susan D. Goodman; Cari and Michael Sacks; Rena and Daniel Sternberg; and Lisa Roumell and Mark Rosenthal.

Kathryn Andrews (American, born 1973), Hobo (Santa’s Helper No. 2), 2014, ink on paper and Plexiglas, aluminum, paint, and mixed media, 43 3/4 x 37 x 2 1/4 in. (111.1 x 94 x 5.7 cm). Collection of Laurence Chandler. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

SIGHTINGS: MICHAEL DEAN

Michael Dean, Installation view, Michael Dean: Sic Glyphs, South London Gallery, London, 2016. Courtesy the artist; Herald Street, London; Mendes Wood DM, Sao Paulo; Supportico Lopez, Berlin.

OCTOBER 22, 2016 – FEBRUARY 5, 2017

Born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1977, Michael Dean explores themes of language, the act of writing, and the struggle to communicate in a variety of forms, including sculpture, photography, poetry, plays, publications, and performance. Often made of concrete forms cast in flexible plastic bags, his sculptures sometimes vaguely resemble letters of the alphabet and are occasionally installed on top of Dean’s selfpublished books filled with gibberish or nonsensical phrases printed in handmade, pictogram lettering. Dean was recently selected as a finalist for the vaunted Turner Prize in the UK, largely on the impact of his exhibition, titled Sic Glyphs, mounted at the South London Gallery in March. There, Dean blocked the main entrance to the gallery, forcing viewers to take a circuitous route through the café and outdoor courtyard, before entering the exhibition through the back door. Concrete sculptures in a variety of hues crowded the gallery. Some had been cast in plastic bags, others in corrugated metal siding, bent sheets of which also occupied the floor. Many of the works were bound up or tied together in pairs or groups with rubber straps or plastic

zip ties. Others incorporated bits of chain link fencing. Dried weeds and grasses were strewn on the floor or caught up in the sculptures, as were small plastic specimen baggies, stickers imprinted with cannabis leaves, and random bits of paper with letters spelled out in tiny cannabis leaves. The exhibition arose largely from Dean’s response to the refugee crisis facing Europe and the United Kingdom, and his abstract, industrial objects projected an extraordinary humanity: often slightly hunched, slumped, or leaning on one another, the sculptures took on human qualities that elicited sympathy. The viewer felt for these slightly downtrodden beings and connected with their plight. For his exhibition, Dean will create new works for the unique environs of the Nasher. Sightings: Michael Dean will be the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States.

The Sightings series is generously sponsored by Lara and Stephen Harrison. Sightings: Michael Dean is supported by FABA Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte and The Henry Moore Foundation.

FA L L E X H I B I T I O N E V E N T S

MEMBER PREVIEWS KATHRYN ANDREWS: RUN FOR PRESIDENT Patron and Exhibition Preview* / Thursday, September 8 / 6:30 – 8:30 pm Cocktail attire. Complimentary valet parking. RSVP by September 1 to patron@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5169 *Donors at the Miro Circle and above.

Find out more about the Patron Circle by contacting Rebecca Watkins, Associate Director of Development, at 214.242.5169 or rwatkins@nashersculpturecenter.org Member Reception and Exhibition Preview / Friday, September 9 / 6 - 8 pm Business attire. Complimentary parking available in the Trammell Crow Center garage. RSVP by September 1 to memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5154

SIGHTINGS: MICHAEL DEAN Member Wine Reception and Exhibition Preview* / Friday, October 21 / 6 – 7:30 pm RSVP by October 14 to memberevents@nashersculpturecenter.org or 214.242.5154 *Donors at the Hepworth Circle and above.

EXHIBITION LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES 360: ARTISTS, CRITICS, CURATORS SPEAKER SERIES Kathryn Andrews, Exhibition Artist / Saturday, September 10 / 2 pm Michael Dean, Exhibition Artist / Saturday, October 22 / 2 pm Free with admission. Free for Members. Complimentary wine reception.

+ RSVP online or email 360RSVP@nashersculpturecenter.org. Presenting Sponsor: Martha and Max Wells. The 360 videography project is supported by Suzanne and Ansel Aberly: this support enables digital recording of all 360 Speaker Series programs and the creation of an online archive for learners of all ages. Additional support for 360 Speaker Series provided by Sylvia Hougland and the City of Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs.

NASHER NOW: CLASSES FOR ADULTS Kathryn Andrews / Thursday, September 29 / 6 - 8 pm Enjoy a timely look at the campaigns and the presidency with an artful discussion of the work of Kathyrn Andrews. Explore works in the galleries from multiple viewpoints, select icons from pop culture to politics, and create a personal campaign button. Michael Dean / Saturday, November 19 / 10 am – 12 pm Explore the tactile and visual aspects of artist Michael Dean’s sculpture and draw connections between the materials and forms he uses. Respond to the themes in Dean’s work through writing, performance, and art-making.

+ RSVP online or email lwilbur@nashersculpturecenter.org.

Richard Serra, T.E. Which Way Which Way?, 2001. Lithograph and etching, 59 1/2 x 47 3/4 in. Edition 26/45. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS

RICHARD SERRA PRINTS JANUARY 28 – APRIL 23, 2017

Best known for his groundbreaking, large-scale Cor-Ten steel sculptures, Richard Serra has been making prints since his first collaboration with Gemini G.E.L. in 1972. Through the use of experimental printing techniques and such unorthodox materials as oilstick and silica, he has continually pushed the boundaries of traditional printmaking. Many of Serra’s prints directly relate to specific sculptures and are the artist’s attempts at resolving the multiplicity of viewpoints experienced when walking in, around, or through his sculpture. The large format and rich textural surfaces of his prints evoke the complex tectonic attributes of his steel sculptures, such as weight, compression, stasis, mass, and tension. Drawn from the collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation, Richard Serra: Prints will feature the artist’s earliest graphic attempts in lithography through more recent works created in 2015.

Opposite: Richard Serra, T.E. Which Way Which Way?, 2001. Lithograph and etching, 59 1/2 x 47 3/4 in. Edition 26/45. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer Above: Richard Serra, Bo Diddley, 1999. Etching, 48 x 47 1/2 in. Edition RTP. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer (HIPM) © Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

PAPER INTO SCULPTURE

MARCH 11 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; JULY 16, 2017 Even as the shift to digitized images, virtual reality, and social media has been said to herald its obsolescence, paper nonetheless remains inescapable in our daily lives. Accessible to all, paper endures as the site of notes, lists, price tags, reminders, sketches, adsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at once the most mundane and the most intimate of communication media, and the most readily discarded. As concerns about humanityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impact on the environment intensify, paper is also one of the most persistent reminders of our connections to nature through the cyclical aspect of its creation, disposal, and regeneration through recycling. Derived largely from plant fibers, paper also ages and degrades, its fragility inspiring metaphorical associations with human corporeality and vulnerability. The artists in Paper into Sculpture, including Marco Maggi, Joshua Neustein, Nancy Rubins, and others, play on tensions between commonly held understandings of sculpture and what paper can and cannot do, pushed to its physical limits. Treating paper as a material with a palpable three-dimensional presence rather than as a mere support for mark-making, they use processes ranging from tearing, crumpling, and cutting to scattering, binding, and adhering to create sculptural works that take a variety of forms, with a varied range of expressive and conceptual implications.

UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS Nancy Rubins, Drawing, 2010, graphite pencil on paper, 134 x 379 x 12 in. (340 x 963 x 30 cm). Â© Nancy Rubins. Photo by Erich Koyama. Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery.

Noteworthy Acquisition: Work by Ana Mendieta Thanks to the generous support of the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists, the Nasher Sculpture Center has purchased a group of works encompassing sculpture, photography, and video by the highly influential Cuban-American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985). The acquisition represents a significant milestone for the Nasher as the first works by Mendieta to enter the collection. In addition to expanding the Nasher’s holdings in work by women artists, this acquisition further augments the representation in the collection of performance documented via photography and film. The scope of this acquisition ensures that the Nasher will be able to present a cross section of Mendieta’s career in a variety of media, and provide our viewers with a thorough presentation of her art. We welcome these works into the collection and look forward to exhibiting them at the Nasher.

FOR THE LAST TWELVE YEARS I HAVE BEEN CARRYING ON A DIALOGUE BETWEEN THE LANDSCAPE AND THE FEMALE BODY. HAVING BEEN TORN FROM MY HOMELAND (CUBA) DURING MY ADOLESCENCE, I AM OVERWHELMED BY THE FEELING OF HAVING BEEN CAST OUT FROM THE WOMB (NATURE). MY ART IS THE WAY I REESTABLISH BONDS THAT UNITE ME TO THE UNIVERSE. IT IS A RETURN TO THE MATERNAL SOURCE. THESE OBSESSIVE ACTS OF REASSERTING MY TIES WITH THE EARTH ARE REALLY A MANIFESTATION OF MY THIRST FOR BEING. IN ESSENCE, MY WORKS ARE THE REACTIVATION OF PRIMEVAL BELIEFS AT WORK WITHIN THE HUMAN PSYCHE. – ANA MENDIETA, 1983

In a career that spanned just over a decade, Mendieta produced a remarkable body of work that included ephemeral outdoor performances and creations documented in photographs, 35mm slides and Super 8 films, as well as sculpture and drawing, before her untimely death in 1985 at the age of 36. Rooted in nature and the body, Mendieta’s art fused both, and her legacy paved the way for artists of subsequent generations to create works involving identity politics, feminism, and performance. Born in Havana, Cuba to a politically distinguished family, Mendieta was a young witness to the Cuban Revolution of 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista government. Mendieta’s father Ignacio was originally pro-Castro but quickly became disillusioned as Castro moved politically further and further left to align his principles with those of the Soviet Union and Communism. In 1961, Mendieta’s parents decided to send their daughters to the United States to avoid their children’s indoctrination in Communist ideology. At the age of 12, Mendieta and her two sisters were sent to live in Dubuque, Iowa by way of Miami. This experience was understandably jarring for Mendieta and her two sisters, and left an indelible impression on the artist, who would go on to make work in response to her feelings of exile, absence, identity, and the earth and its associations to the motherland. Mendieta studied painting and intermedia arts under Hans Breder at the University of Iowa. Through Breder’s encouragement, she moved away from painting into the more performative mode of working for which she is known today. Mendieta’s earth body sculptures—a series entitled Silueta, or silhouette, for which the artist combined the body (or its absence), performance, and the landscape—have garnered considerable critical attention and have been described as the core of her practice. These works were commonly

Ana Mendieta Untitled, 1985 Wood and gunpowder 80 x 11 x 2 inches (204.5 x 28.6 x 3.8 cm). Nasher Sculpture Center, Acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York

ACQUISITIONS

achieved by Mendieta inserting her body into the landscape—either lying in repose on a field of grass, beneath a pile of flowers; within an earthen outline of her form, dug out of the ground; or among a pile of rocks on the side of an ancient pyramid—or constructing a surrogate form of herself directly on the land. In early Silueta works, Mendieta appears and uses her body to create the female form or imprint on the landscape; as the series progressed, her body was increasingly absent from the imagery, although its outline or imprint remained. Mendieta’s 1975 film Silueta Sangrienta (which translates to bleeding silhouette) represents a transitional moment in her Silueta series, as the artist’s body is both present and absent throughout the short silent film. Made in Iowa City, Iowa in 1975, the film documents the action of Mendieta embedding her nude body into the landscape. It begins with the artist lying on her back with her hands raised in a pose that recurs throughout her work; the scene then quickly changes to show the cavity of her body’s imprint on the land, filled with bright red blood. The final image is Mendieta’s body lying face down in the blood-filled imprint, uniting the body and its double in a glovelike fit. The only sense that time is passing is the subtle movement of water from a nearby stream that appears in the upper corner of the frame and the changes in light coming through the tree line and falling upon her recumbent form. Silueta Sangrienta is considered by some scholars to be part of a suite of four films classified as “actions” within the Silueta series, as they go beyond simple documentation of Mendieta’s creation of the silhouette form to represent a series of actions carried out by the artist throughout the time-based work. Like many artists involved in Land Art, performance, and body art, Mendieta documented her actions via secondary media as a way to communicate the fleeting nature of her work. For this reason, much of what remains of Mendieta’s oeuvre is in the secondary media of photography, photographic slides, and film. Mendieta was a prolific filmmaker, making more than 80 films throughout her lifetime—more than any other artist in the 1970s. The pair of photographs titled Untitled (Maroya) of 1982 relate to later works from Mendieta’s Silueta series with the repetition of the figure upon the landscape and the absence of the artist’s body within the image. Between the two photographs, Mendieta has captured the action or making of the work (igniting

an earthen form shaped in gunpowder) and the resulting ephemeral silhouette (the cavity of the burned-out gunpowder on the earth). The title of the photographs comes from indigenous Caribbean mythology— Maroya represents the Moon Spirit and was considered by the Taíno (Amerindian culture indigenous to Cuba and the Greater Antilles) to be the link between Divine Woman and human women. Made during a visit to Cuba in the early 1980s, these photographs represent Mendieta’s continuation of the Silueta theme in her work, as well as a symbolic return to her homeland as referenced in the title taken from indigenous Cuban culture. Though photographs, the two objects are sculptural in their making, with Mendieta creating the works through the physical gestures of carving and mark-making directly on the land. In the final two years of her life, Mendieta progressed from documenting ephemeral performances and interventions in the landscape to making discrete objects. These retained many of the key attributes of her earlier art, notably the fusion of earth and body that dominated her visual vocabulary throughout her career. Mendieta’s Untitled, a wood and gunpowder sculpture from 1985, is one of a group of six wooden slab sculptures the artist made while living in Rome in the final year of her life. Through the burning of gunpowder, Mendieta imprinted a female form onto the surface of the tree trunk. The result is a powerful totemic sculpture that subtly references performance (in the creation of the sculpture), the female form (as burned into the wood by gunpowder), and the connection to nature. Works by Mendieta are incredibly rare and only a limited number are available for acquisition.This opportunity—made possible by the Kaleta A. Doolin Fund for Work by Women Artists—marks what could be considered a once-in-a-lifetime occasion for the Nasher to acquire work by this revolutionary and important artist. p

by LEIGH ARNOLD, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Assistant Curator

Clockwise: Ana Mendieta Silueta Sangrienta (Bleeding Silhouette), 1975 Super 8mm film transferred to high-definition digital media, color, silent Running time: 1:51 minutes. Nasher Sculpture Center, Acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York Ana Mendieta Untitled (Maroya), 1985 Lifetime black and white photograph 10 x 8 inches (24.5 x 20.3 cm). Nasher Sculpture Center, Acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York Ana Mendieta Untitled (Maroya), 1982 Lifetime black and white photograph 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm). Nasher Sculpture Center, Acquired through the Kaleta A. Doolin Acquisitions Fund for Women Artists © The Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection, LLC Courtesy Galerie Lelong, New York

ACQUISITIONS

NASHER COLLECTION

Programming Duo to Steer Artist Circle Two years ago, the Nasher launched a group just for practicing artists and art students called the Artist Circle. The group was designed to be programmed with activities and gatherings at the museum, helping foster dialogue and community among the artists in the group, as well as enriching the Nasher’s connections to the local art scene. Recently, two Artist Circle members have been appointed to serve as co-programmers: Lee Escobedo and Karen Weiner. Both Escobedo and Weiner have deep roots in the Dallas art community, with varied backgrounds and interests that they will bring to bear in a series of four events that engage themes from each exhibition in imaginative and dynamic ways over the course of the next year. By way of introducing Lee and Karen, they each contributed some thoughts on their favorite works from the Nasher Collection.

FAVORITE WORKS FROM THE NASHER COLLECTION

LEE ESCOBEDO For me, Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s The Kiss has little resonance of “proto-Cubism” or physical abstraction. It has everything to do with being 15 years old and terrified of my first kiss. It was a game of spin the bottle at my best friend’s house in the slums of Grand Prairie. We were teenage drunk on Coronas and cigars, flesh still moist from swimming in the Texas heat. I sat on the floor in a semicircle, shirt still wet with sweat and chlorine, aroused and confused. She leaned in and smashed her face against mine. I tasted mostly beer and hiccups. But the feeling of her face against mine, that very specific teenage fumbling, was the closest my face had been to another human’s. Older, we are cautious now, allowing for space and breathing room, always the opportunity to pull back. Then, I was forced to breathe through her nose. It was an accident I couldn’t re-create if I tried. Brancusi’s figures are as close as thieves, not only lips, but eyes, nose, fears, melding together. The two figures become one, reminding us of the barriers we place around ourselves, not allowing for the most intimate of moments to occur within life’s randomness. It’s poignant to note that these limited, serialized plastic casts made between 1907-1908 are profane in their simplicity: two characters cut from the same block, conjoining into one through an act of mark-making. While perhaps taken for granted when you have it, the feeling of another’s bones pushing into your face can be, if it wants to be, a very revolutionary thing.

Constantin Brancusi, The Kiss (Le Baiser), 1907-08, Plaster, Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas Photographer: Carrie Fagan @carriefagan

NASHER COLLECTION

FAVORITE WORKS FROM THE NASHER COLLECTION

KAREN WEINER No one is good; no one is evil; everyone is both, in the same way and in different ways. — Paul Gauguin I always look for her when I go to the Nasher: Tahitian Girl by Paul Gauguin, 1896. She is made from wood, her detachable head well crafted and somewhat larger than her tapering figure. Is she a talisman or totem? A sculpted figure from one of his paintings? Although she resembles the Tahitian women in his paintings, she seems more closely related to the carved wooden door frame of his house in Hiva Oa where he died, or to the images in his journalistic collection of prints and text, Noa Noa, or to another figure, Oviri, which marks his grave. It is her power, her mystery, her beauty, and her dichotomy that draw me in. Perhaps the two parts of head/torso signify mind/body differentiation or submerged inner struggles that Gauguin dealt with: the complicated European world he came from and the simpler island existence he sought, an existential conflict that he failed to resolve.

Paul Gauguin, Tahitian Girl, ca.1896, wood and mixed media, Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection, Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas

LEE ESCOBEDO

is an art critic and writer for Berlin Art Link, Glasstire, Arts & Culture, Patron Magazine, and The Dallas Morning News. He is also founder and co-host of “What is Cinema?”, a cinema podcast funded by two exclusive grants from the City of Dallas to connect Dallas youth to the cultural and arts institutions of the city. @ch010-g0th

KAREN WEINER

is the founder and director of The Reading Room, a project space in Dallas dedicated to investigating the relationships between text and image. An independent curator, she recently programmed the 24 Hour Book Swap for Piero Golia’s Chalet Dallas at the Nasher, Reading in Unison for Make Art with Purpose, and is a member of the advisory group for the Dallas Pavilion book project. Karen is also a visual artist engaging media and language, including the 451 card catalog for Co-Re-Creating Spaces at CentralTrak and an entry for the Fountainhead book project of The Art Foundation, among others. thereadingroom-dallas.blogspot.com

Nancy Grossman, Bust, 1968 Leather over wood and white enamel, 18 x ?? x ?? in., Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection

NANCY GROSSMAN’S

BUST Judith Butler, philosopher, professor, and leading thinker in feminist and queer theories, posits a deep value to “being outside oneself.” The projection of one’s identity beyond oneself and into otherness persists throughout art history, from the reveries of Persian poetry and Indian classical music to the paintings of Caravaggio and, today, the ecstatic video installations of Lizzie Fitch and Ryan Trecartin. Butler’s theories have been central to contemporary efforts to redefine subjectivity and the relation of the self to others, yet they rose directly out of the historical, social, and political movements of the 1960s and 1970s. For Nancy Grossman, whose Bust (1968) is on display as part of Kathryn Andrews’ selection of works from the Nasher Collection, these movements, and the turmoil surrounding them, fed an art that also raises persistent, unsettling questions about the nature of the self. Following her studies at the Pratt Institute, Nancy Grossman, (American, born in1940) began her professional life as an artist working primarily with collage and abstract landscapes. A shift in the type of work that engaged Grossman occurred in 1965 when her mentor, the sculptor David Smith, as a challenge to the younger artist’s mastery of material, gave her a trove of unused leather horse harnesses from his farm. Though the incorporation of leather would prove a decisive move for Grossman, Smith tragically never saw them. He died in a car accident before he could to see the first of Grossman’s new series of assemblages, titled For David Smith. G rossman’s practice from 1965 to 1967 was inspired in part by the loss of her mentor, and further enabled by the freedom afforded her by receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1965. In conversation with the work of contemporaries such as Lee Bontecou, Robert Rauschenberg, and John Chamberlain, Grossman’s assemblages incorporated painterly, abstract expressionistic elements, the cut-up repurposed leather forms used as if they were lines in a painting by Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline. Yet, by the end of 1967, the money had run out and so had the inspiration as Grossman was forced to seek out employment as an illustrator of children’s books to support herself. The sudden cessation of art-making was traumatic for Grossman, and she described herself as bound, “stuck with my legs chained to the table night and day.” She goes on, “When I finally came back to my studio I couldn’t relate to my work at all. Energy itself was terrifying to me. I had so quieted down from my imprisonment that I was in despair.” The first drawing she made upon returning to the studio was of a head, in bondage, clad in leather. It is a tribute to Grossman’s sense of adventure and trust in the artistic process that she pursued this sudden figurative, provocative turn in her work despite the fact that it would be a direct challenge to the cultural mainstream emerging from abstract expressionism into the full embrace of minimalism.

Even at her first solo show at Krasner Gallery in 1964, one sees in Grossman’s work a hybridity and blurring of boundaries: landscapes are equal parts subjective and objective; her collages slice through time and remix elements of her life; and her bodies are sites upon which social, psychological, political, and emotional forces all intersect. Though her process is modernist and intuitive, working through material to answer aesthetic questions, the outward form of her work, starting with the leather heads, is decidedly post-modern. The heads symbolically bridge the individual and social body and likewise blend the organic and the machinic. Their political force is immediately felt; their passionate engagement with social life, and their inward turn toward the subjective and contingent conditions of identity, must have struck a powerful feminist chord in the cool, maledominated art world of New York in the late 1960s.

NASHER COLLECTION

It often took Grossman a year to complete a single bust. After carefully carving them in wood—often reclaimed wood from found objects such as telephone poles—Grossman would cover the visible portions of the heads in gleaming white enamel before adorning their surfaces with leather. She painstakingly took apart and repurposed used leather, in the process yielding odd, striking shapes that she would use like lines in a drawing. Zippers, chains, belt buckles, harness strings, horns, fierce silver teeth all made their way into the busts. A new language took form, evocative of bondage and fetishism, yet more intuitively expressive of an erupting psychic energy. For example, when she first decided to make these images of bound heads into sculpture, Grossman used the symbol of the upraised fist of the Black Power movement as the form for the heads. The leather-and-metal-clad heads also have connections with African tribal art, such as Songye and Congolese Nkisi Nkondi figures. Though they read as male, Nancy Grossman describes the busts as self-portraits. It is hard not to see the work as embodying a moment in which many firm categories of social identity such as gender, race, and sexuality began to become undone and fluid – exactly the condition Butler would theorize two decades later. Needless to say, the busts were a sensation. First exhibited in 1969 at Cordier & Eckstrom gallery (from which the Nashers purchased Bust), again at the 1973 Whitney Biennial, and ultimately in the artist’s numerous retrospectives, Grossman’s leather heads were at the forefront of a powerful shift in 20thcentury art, from modernist to post-modernist concerns. Strikingly, it is at this, its most progressive moment, that classical elements begin to appear in Grossman’s work. Her dialogue with violence brings her into historical conversation with Goya and Caravaggio. Numerous commentators have compared Grossman’s bound figures to Michaelangelo’s Dying Slave. The choice to use the bust, a form dating back to antiquity, places Grossman’s singular voice within sculpture’s long narrative of what is human and what is deserving of commemoration. p

by AVI VARMA

In the Archive: Stiftung Arp, Berlin p

written by CATHERINE CRAFT, Ph.D. Nasher Sculpture Center Curator

This summer I was fortunate to spend three weeks in Europe, where among other activities I visited archives in Berlin, Locarno, Zurich, and Paris for research on an upcoming Nasher Sculpture Center exhibition devoted to the artist Hans (Jean) Arp (1886-1966). In addition to Arp’s Torso with Buds (1961) being the founding work of Raymond and Patsy Nasher’s collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, Arp was one of the most important artists of the modern era, although today he is perhaps also one of the lesser known. As a founder of the Dada movement during World War I, Arp pioneered the use of chance and spontaneity as artistic processes, and his employment of fabricators for the creation of his reliefs preceded by decades such artists as Donald Judd (who admired Arp tremendously). In the 1910s and 1920s he developed a vocabulary of curving, organic forms that moved fluidly between abstraction and representation, becoming the lingua franca for several generations of artists who followed, starting with the Surrealists and Abstract Expressionists. Arp’s sculptures in the round, begun around 1930, took on varied orientations and went through complex processes of multiple fragmentations, casting and recasting, enlarging and reducing. His approach to creativity rivalled that of his fellow Dadaist, Marcel Duchamp; like Duchamp, Arp remade works that were lost, damaged, or sold, placing priority on the underlying concept that spurred them into being. If that weren’t enough, Arp also energetically explored practices central in today’s global art world. Born an Alsatian who switched easily between Alsatian dialect, German, and French (signaled by the Hans / Jean of his name), Arp deftly negotiated boundaries between cultures, countries, movements, and media, at ease being identified as a Dadaist, Surrealist, or abstractionist, a painter or a sculptor, an artist or a poet. He collaborated with fellow artists and writers on artworks, exhibitions, and magazines, traveling all over Europe

Photographs of Hans (Jean) Arp, ca. 1920s-1960s. Clockwise from upper left: photo of Arp and El Lissitzky with silhouettes of Arp by Hannah Höch; Arp at work on plaster sculpture in his studio, Clamart; party in garden, Clamart, with guests including Meret Oppenheim and Max Ernst; Arp at Pompeii; Arp and Richard Huelsenbeck looking at one of Arp’s sculptures; Arp working on sculptures in garden, Clamart. Photo binders from the Archive, Stiftung Arp e.v., Berlin. Photo: Catherine Craft.

Reading room, library and archive, Stiftung Arp, e.V., Berlin © Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth (photo: Leo Pompinon).

to meet his peers, participating in group shows and working on collaborative publications. According to Maike Steinkamp, curator at the Berlin archive I visited, who has studied several such projects, “Arp was the original networker.” I hope that the Nasher’s exhibition, which will open in the fall of 2018 and will be the first such show in the U.S. in three decades, will introduce Arp to a whole new generation and reestablish his significance. That sentiment is shared by the three European foundations dedicated to preserving and promoting Arp’s legacy. The largest of these, the Stiftung Arp, e.V., was founded in Rolandseck, Germany in 1977 by the artist’s widow and in 2013 opened a branch in Berlin to house its collection, archive, and library to make them more accessible to researchers. To encourage new research, they also established travel fellowships to enable scholars, students, and curators to come to Berlin and work in their large, airy space on the top floor of a renovated building in a former industrial area in West Berlin. Receiving one of these fellowships made it easier for me to come to Berlin for 10 days, most of which I spent at the Stiftung in the company of Steinkamp, its curator, and two other research fellows. Working on an exhibition devoted to an artist of the past brings an entirely different set of challenges than one focused on a living artist. Because Arp died half a century ago, there are very few people alive today who knew him well, and although his homes and studios in Clamart, near Paris, and in Locarno, Switzerland, have been preserved, they are as much museums as living environments. The interviews and accounts of studio visits with living artists familiar to readers of The Nasher magazine are replaced by visits to libraries, museum galleries and storerooms, and archives. Research on living artists also depends on reading publications and looking at artworks in various collections, but

artists’ archives are largely repositories of correspondence, photographs, texts and drafts of texts, legal documents, and other ephemera, much of which has survived, by chance, over a lifetime dedicated to making art, not keeping tidy, complete files. (That tends to come later, with commercial success, and the efforts of family members or galleries to create a more organized record.) Published interviews and accounts of studio visits with contemporary artists have a theatrical element largely missing from archival research: characters (artist and visitor) interact, and readers become the audience for their exchange. Trying to recount what happens in an archive is far less thrilling on its face: it can be compared to a treasure hunt, but often the goal of the hunt is not clear. Maybe there will be a “Eureka!” moment of discovery—an unpublished text, a revealing letter—but often what happens is a slow accrual of knowledge and familiarity with people born generations ago. Those glimpses of immediacy are difficult to quantify, but they somehow quicken the mind of a researcher. For example, I already knew from published sources that especially prior to the death of his first wife in 1943, Arp was known for his high-spirited, absurdist wit and self-deprecating humor. I also knew that although he was a gifted poet, he did not participate in Dada readings and performances as regularly as his friends. Those qualities came into sharp relief in a panicked yet very funny letter Arp wrote to his sister-inlaw in 1928 that begins:

I’m answering you in great haste because this evening I have to read at the literary club Hottingen and I have to prepare. I have stagefright and anxiety that I’m going to collapse and urinate in my shoes. I’ll lie on the floor like puke, while the last rites are spoken over me….

Exhibition gallery, Stiftung Arp, e.V., Berlin ÂŠ Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth (photo: Leo Pompinon)

Sculpture storage, Stiftung Arp, e.V., Berlin © Stiftung Arp e.V., Berlin/Rolandswerth (photo: Leo Pompinon)

The Lesezirkel Hottingen was a prestigious literary club in Zurich, Switzerland, which numbered Rainer Maria Rilke, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, and Hermann Hesse among writers they invited to read. Arp’s invitation—which I’ve seen no reference to in other sources—indicates recognition and respect, but the letter also casts a revealing light on Arp’s quiet demeanor and subversive sense of humor: beyond the description of escalating disaster and complete physical unraveling he describes, his language (the letter is written in german) veers into nonsensical words of dialect and puns that suggest a complete undoing, while performing the kind of linguistic dexterity that must have prompted the club’s invitation. The Stiftung Arp also houses a large photo archive encompassing Arp’s life and work, with clowning vacation photos mingled with photos of the artist in his studio or, more rarely, at work. In the 1930s, he often worked on plaster sculptures in the garden at Clamart, and it is a bracing shock to see the rough surfaces of his plasters as he built them

up, and before he began the long process of scraping and sanding them to a point of uncanny, elusive smoothness. Likewise, other photos show an array of saws that Arp used for cutting apart plasters and reconfiguring them. He lived and worked surrounded by his art, including multiple casts of the same sculpture—the photos in the archive also serve as evidence of the location and proliferation of works in his home and studio over time. The Berlin archive and library occupies one end of a large skylit space, which houses at its center and other end an exhibition gallery and storage for Arp’s sculptures, reliefs, and works on paper. It’s difficult to imagine a better research break than walking across the room to look at the actual objects reproduced and discussed in all the papers at hand. Arp worked in plaster directly, and as he began to create a body of sculptural works, he also began keeping casts of his plasters, using them both for inspiration and as sources for new sculptures, by turning them on their sides, cutting into

them, and otherwise reorienting them. Photographs of related works can be deeply misleading—much better to walk 20 feet and look at the objects themselves, sometimes made years apart, to appreciate Arp’s capacity to conceive, visualize, and transmute forms decades before CAD programs. Working in an archive can be tedious, but that tedium can be important. Reading through letter after letter about Arp’s ill health in later years, his stage fright when called upon to participate in readings and performances, and finding out which old friends write to him in the familiar “you” (tu in French, and du in German), rather than the more formal vous and Sie, provide a sense of the texture of a life, lived, day in and day out. Letters from the 1930s and early 1940s become palpably more anxious as Arp and his friends sensed the rising dangers of Nazi Germany and options for movement became increasingly limited; after World War II, Arp’s ill health alternates with reports of an amazingly active working and travel schedule. On this trip, I focused on the facts of

Arp’s daily life: family and friends, studio and house, work and play. When I return to the archive this fall to complete my fellowship, I will track Arp’s professional collaborations in the years after World War II—the time of the Nasher’s Torso with Buds—with his foundries, studio assistants, gallerists, and publishers. As usual, and to my delight, I have little idea what I will find.

Regarding the Stiftung Arp, e.V., its history, fellowship program, and current fellows, see http://stiftungarp.de/forschungundprojekte/stipendien/. 1

These former residences are the site of the other two Arp foundations, which I also visited on this trip: the Fondation Arp, Clamart, France (http:// www.fondationarp.org/) and Fondazione Marguerite Hagenbach Arp, Locarno, Switzerland (http://fondazionearp.ch/). 2

Letter to Marie Arp, March 10, 1928, Stiftung Arp, e.V. Translated from German by the author. 3

Works of art by Hans (Jean) Arp © Hans (Jean) Arp Art Rights Society (ARS), New York

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER EDITIONS

Liz Larner Internationally renowned artist Liz Larner has created a new editioned work of art specially for the Nasher Sculpture Center. yes this too continues Larner’s investigation of irregular geometries and deceptively simple sculptural forms. Often rounded, softened, bent, bowed, or hollowed out, the new forms can bear little resemblance to their geometric antecedents, becoming unique and evocative embodiments in their own right. yes this too is a mirrored triangle, inflated, rounded, and volumetric, like a closed bivalve shell. The resulting form is suggestive of the graphic rendering of a heart, the symbol of love. Larner has explored this form in only one other work, a tiny sculpture that she cast in silver as a private edition to give to friends and family who attended her wedding. The intimacy of the association is evident in the form of yes this too, as well: larger than the tiny work Larner made for her wedding guests, the Nasher edition sculpture is tactile, smooth, and pleasing to touch. As the artist has noted, it is a work intended for an intimate, domestic environment, something that can be easily moved from room to room. The shiny and polished surface of the sculpture reflects its surroundings and provides new experiences in different settings. yes this too is only the second work that Larner has made in stainless steel: the first was X, the large-scale sculpture that Larner made for Nasher XChange, the citywide exhibition of art in the public realm, organized by the Nasher Sculpture Center in celebration of its 10th anniversary in 2013. Proceeds from the sale of yes this too benefit exhibition and education programs at the Nasher Sculpture Center. About the Artist Liz Larner was born in 1960 in Sacramento, California, and attended the California Institute of the Arts, where she received her bachelor of fine arts in 1985. Larner has had important solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Kunsthalle Basel (Switzerland); MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna; and a variety of international galleries. She has been included in numerous group exhibitions, including Blues for Smoke, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Under Destruction, Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland; Immaterial, Ballroom Marfa, Marfa, Texas; and Uncontained, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Larner has been honored with multiple awards, including a Pacific Design Center Stars of Design Award in 2005 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1999. Objects from her diverse body of work reside in many noteworthy public and private collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Fundación/Colección Jumex, Mexico City; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece. She lives and works in Los Angeles. For more information or to purchase, contact Rebecca Watkins, Associate Director of Development, at 214.242.5169 or rwatkins@nashersculpturecenter.org.

NASHER EDITIONS

Liz Larner yes this too, 2015 Stainless steel, 3 1/2 x 8 x 9 in. Edition of 20, + 3 AP Benefiting the Nasher Sculpture Center Special Initial Offer: $20,000* *This pricing available until September 15, 2016

NASHER PRIZE 2017

Nasher Prize Dialogues Nasher Prize Dialogues is a discursive platform intended to foster international awareness of sculpture and of the Nasher Prize, and to stimulate discussion and debate. Programs—including panel discussions, lectures, and symposia—are held yearly in cities around the world, offering engagement with various audiences, and providing myriad perspectives and insight into the ever-expanding field of sculpture.

> Learn more

Berlin / September 14 Akademie der Künste / 5 – 7 pm THE WORK OF SCULPTURE IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL PRODUCTION The Nasher Sculpture Center, in partnership with Berlin’s Akademie der Künste and Berlin Art Week, presents a Nasher Prize Dialogues program: a panel discussion that will explore how digital technology and photographic imaging affect sculptural practice. The panel comprises artists, curators, and writers who either employ or address digital technology in the creation of sculptural work outright or in New Media work that has sculptural concerns related to the human figure, spatial perception, and sensory experience. Panelists include artist Bettina Pousttchi, Rachel de Joode, and Kasper König, Artistic Director, 5th Münster Sculpture Project, 2017, among others, and is moderated by Jörg Heiser, co-editor of frieze. Join the conversation on

SAVE THE DATES / NASHER PRIZE DIALOGUES

Mexico City / March 18 Museo Jumex

Dallas / March 30 – 31 Nasher Prize Dialogues Graduate Symposium Nasher Sculpture Center / March 30 / 10 am – 4 pm Nasher Prize Dialogues Symposium featuring Nasher Prize Jurors Dallas Museum of Art / March 31 / 10:30 am Nasher Prize Dialogues Symposium featuring Nasher Prize Laureate Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts / March 31 / 2 pm

These symposia are part of a month-long series of programs designed around the Nasher Prize and this year’s Laureate. The month of community programs are presented by The Dallas Foundation, with additional support provided by the Heart of Neiman Marcus Foundation. JPMorgan Chase & Co. is pleased to renew their support of Nasher Prize in 2017.

NASHER SCULPTURE CENTER

2016 ARTIST MICROGRANTS RECIPIENTS Gregory Ruppe has an idea. He wants to create a self-sufficient hydroponic sound sculpture that would provide the food necessary to feed a single person every day for the rest of his or her life. It’s a big idea, and he doesn’t even have the money to research its feasibility. That is, he didn’t. Not until he applied for a Nasher Sculpture Center Artist Microgrant. Ruppe is a recipient of a $2,000 grant from the museum, along with Francisco Moreno, lauren woods, Longhui Zhang, and Timothy Harding. The grants afford the artists various opportunities or tools for their various practices. For Ruppe, this money will fund his research, while for Harding, it was almost exactly the amount needed to purchase a vinyl cutter. This allows his gridbased imagery to graduate from a ruler-andtape method of making to more complex, computer-generated designs. “There’s no other way that I would’ve been able to get this piece of equipment,” says Harding. “I don’t have that money sitting in my bank account, so it was a spectacular opportunity that will allow my artwork to evolve.” With the launch of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s Microgrants in 2015, the museum became a line of direct support for North Texas artists. These $2,000 grants are awarded yearly and go to five artists working in various media. Recipients are chosen by a jury of artists, including previous winners. The application process requires the potential recipient to outline how money will further their practice, whether it be by alleviating expenses or funding a project outright. For Zhang, a Plano-based artist, the money will allow him to continue his exploration of the effects of immigration. His current project involves reuniting suitcases left in airports with their rightful owners. He’ll use the grant money either for shipping or for returning suitcases by hand to Texas owners, and he’ll be able to document the process.

“I had the idea a while ago, but the project had to pause due to shortage of budget,” says Zhang. “The Microgrant [allows me to] focus my attention on the quality of recording the returning process as a documentary.” Zhang notes that the grant won’t cover the entire project, but it helps. For woods, the money kickstarts a new project in which she will explore the intersection of the “bluebonnet, Texas history and the relationship of Black bodies to both the natural landscape and built environment.” woods, who’s known for politically-charged, intricately layered work, will start with the tradition of bluebonnet portraiture, focused on Black Texas residents, and weave in images of members of Mothers Against Police Brutality who’ve had to bury loved ones in the state’s soil. With additional funds, these images would manifest as both large-scale photographs and would adorn billboards in South Dallas. For woods, this is just the beginning of a larger project. Moreno is fairly confident the grant money can be stretched to bring his idea to fruition. He plans to continue his painting series of deconstructed classic works refocused on contemporary and personal fixations. Last year, he reimagined the painting Washington Crossing the Delaware as a way to explore ideas of otherness, immigration, and car culture. His Microgrant will fund an immersive painting inspired by Mexican muralists but taking the form of a chapel based on the Hermitage of the Veracruz de Maderuelo at Spain’s Prado Museum, which Moreno visited earlier this year. “I’m not a spiritual person, but being in that space was a magical experience and I wanted to re-create that in a way that’s specific to my own endeavors,” says Moreno. “It will certainly be a process to complete it, but having the support of the Nasher will allow me to bring the idea to life.” p

by LAUREN SMART

The Nasher Artist Microgrants program provides annual financial support to North Texas artists through small-sum grants. The 2016 awardees were chosen by a jury that included former Microgrant recipients, artists Christopher Blay and Margaret Meehan, artist and educator Cam Schoepp, artist and recent Rome Prize winner E.V. Day, as well as Nasher Assistant Curator Leigh Arnold, and Nasher Curator of Education Anna Smith. Help the Nasher maintain this important initiative by making a gift to support to our local artists. Please contact Rebecca Watkins at 214.242.5169 or RWatkins@nashersculpturecenter.org for more information.

1. lauren woods A Portrait of the African Shore (installation detail) 5-channel synced video monitor installation. An ongoing video landscape archive of more than 100 clips taken from various fictional and documentary films that image the “African” shoreline. From the series titled The AFRICA Archives. 2. Francisco Moreno Dormant Subversion, 2012, mixed media 3. Longhui Zhang Where to Go, 2014, suitcases with paint, 9 x 9 x 9 feet. 4. Gregory Ruppe Sound performance at galleryHOMELAND for the opening of Kokomo, 2015. 5. Timothy Harding 64” x 52” on 52” x 40”, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 55” x 44” x 10”.

WOODS 5

A Portrait of the African Shore (installation detail) 5-channel synced video monitor installation An ongoing video landscape archive of over 100 clips taken from various fictional and documentary MORENO Dormant Subversion, 2012, mixed media films that image the "African” shoreline. Archive updates every two years as new clips are added. From the series entitled The AFRICA Archives.

Longh

HARDING 64” x 52” on 52” x 40”, 2015, acrylic on canvas, 55” x 44” x 10”

RUPPE

ZHANG

Where to Go, 2014, suitcases with paint, 9x9x9 feet

Photo: Allison V. Smith

INTERVIEW WITH CAROL ZOU OF TRANS.LATION p

interview by LEE ESCOBEDO

Artist, activist, and community leader Carol Zou is one of Dallas’ strongest voices when it comes to collaborative problem-solving and fighting for cultural equity. Zou is artist-in-residence and project manager for Trans.lation, the project Rick Lowe created in 2013 in collaboration with Nasher XChange, in the Vickery Meadow neighborhood of Dallas. The Nasher magazine chatted with Zou on her ambitions for the project, as well as her macro-goals for Dallas as a sustainable and fair capital for the arts.

LEE ESCOBEDO:

While social-engagement and political concerns run true, how would you describe your practice in artistic terms?

was very interested in the way the progressive/liberal ideas of California socially engaged art could be translated to a predominantly conservative context such as Texas.

I find Rick Lowe’s invocation of Joseph Beuys’ concept of “social sculpture” to be really helpful in describing socially engaged art practice. In the sense that sculpture is about manipulating a physical medium, such as clay or wood, social sculpture is about the social as medium and the ways in which it can be shaped. Specifically, both my work with Trans.lation and the Michelada Think Tank look at the social conditions of a neighborhood such as Vickery Meadow or a community like the arts and pose questions as well as facilitate ways in which that social condition can be shaped, often along visionary lines that relate to social justice and equity. While I don’t like to endorse any heroic imagining of the artist, I do think that the artist’s role is to contribute vision, history, analysis, and imagination to the social space.

As part of my graduate program, I began working with Rick on the first iteration of Trans.lation and continued to keep in touch after the initial Nasher XChange. He invited me to Project Row Houses to serve as an advisory member for the creation of a socially engaged artist fellowship, and then when the fellowship was created, he offered it to me to work at Trans.lation.

CAROL ZOU:

How were you chosen for the Trans.lation project at Vickery Meadows and what about the project specifically interested you?

Rick has been a great mentor to me and I am incredibly blessed to be working with him on a project that he initiated. Working in Vickery Meadow also allows me to reconnect with both my origins as a first-generation immigrant living in Texas and as a social/cultural organizer in Los Angeles. Growing up in Texas was incredibly difficult because for the longest time I didn’t have a context for anyone who looked like or had the same background as me. What I find beautiful about Vickery Meadow is that it posits a new view of Texas as a community of immigrants and people of color who have so much to share.

CZ: I

LE:

studied under the feminist performance artist Suzanne Lacy in the Otis College of Art and Design Graduate Public Practice Program for my master’s in fine art. As part of the program, we were required to do field internships with socially engaged artists. I expressed to Suzanne that I was interested in Rick Lowe’s work with Project Row Houses, as it was a place-based project in Texas where my family currently lives. Having grown up north of Austin, Texas, I

How does your participation in this project work in dialogue to your practice as a whole? I’ve been working on collaborative, place-based, and social-justice work for a long time. I see Trans.lation as my practice for the time being because it provides me with a platform to work through all of my inquiries. CZ:

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LE: What about Rick Lowe’s vision do you relate to and work

to keep true with your involvement? When Rick gave the keynote at Open Engagement 2015 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he said something that has always resonated with me, which is that “revolution is the sustained empowerment of those who are most powerless.” I think about that a lot in relationship to Project Row Houses and Trans.lation. There’s a lot to unpack in that quote. Artists are often celebrated for being these radical, fringe figures, but to be quite honest, a lot of that radical politics is contained within the message of the physical artwork and doesn’t really intersect with true community organizing around social justice. Rick’s words really help me clarify my accountability and reason for doing this work— which is to say that radical politics and artwork need to be accountable to “those who are most powerless.” CZ:

have you expanded the dialogue around the social sculpture of Trans.lation into the Michelada Think Tank? What have been specific aims with this project?

meta level of who is practicing socially engaged art and which practices get highlighted, it starts to look incredibly inequitable when it comes to racial representation. In pointing out this discrepancy, we began to interrogate the ways in which art institutions across the board were not supportive of the practices of artists of color. When we received the Lift Your Voice grant to work in Dallas and I began working in Dallas, I noticed that the local context had a lot to do with the specifics of cultural inequity that artists experience. Now that we’re in four different cities, Michelada Think Tank is focusing on teasing out the specific dynamics of any particular institution or community that we’re working with. For Dallas, we identified the need for institutions to undergo training on how they can be more supportive of cultural equity, and also for artists to be organized at the ground level and be equipped with the vocabulary and tactics to have a meaningful voice.

LE: How

Michelada Think Tank was a separate project from Trans.lation that originated at Open Engagement 2014 in Queens, New York, when (after being rejected from the conference) we circulated a postcard with the presenter demographics of the conference. Unsurprisingly, the presenters were predominantly white. I just recently read an article on Nonprofit With Balls about “Meta-Equity” and I think this describes Michelada Think Tank’s work very well. Socially engaged art is considered an equity practice, in the sense that people engaging with it are interested in some type of social transformation. However, on the CZ:

Who are you hoping attends these think tanks, to truly, and fairly, create a more inclusive art community? LE:

CZ: Everyone.

We are all complicit and we can all do better. There are different priorities within different communities/ identity categories for sure, but we live in a time of #BlackLivesMatter where everyone needs to care about equity and inclusion. You are also a conceptual artist. What ideas does your private practice mine, and what materials are you working through? LE:

CZ:

To be quite honest, I haven’t had much time for my

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private practice, and I also question this division between personal versus collaborative practice. I think that’s a very Western and patriarchal construct. I will say that I’m always pondering dynamics of public space and the ways in which the public sphere is shaped according to power inequality, as well as how diaspora affects our understanding of placebased identity. This takes form in prints, interventions, sculptures, video, sound, and discursive gatherings. LE: Having

worked in Los Angeles for a period, where does Dallas stand in comparison to institutions and city assistance to foster the arts, but more important, collaboration within the arts? CZ: There

is so much more money and resource committed to the arts in Los Angeles, and in cultivating individual artists. In Los Angeles, I worked for the public art commissioning and maintenance branch of the Metropolitan Transit Authority. This was just one of three artist commissioning organizations—others were the Los Angeles County Arts Commission and the Department of Cultural Affairs. Additionally, that didn’t include the culture departments in adjoining cities such as Santa Monica and Inglewood, and individual artists could often apply for grants through the State of California. Working in Dallas, I am really shocked by the privatization of arts funding and the lack of support for individual artists. The Office of Cultural Affairs is starting to offer individual artist and cultural equity funding, but that still seems minuscule considering that I came from working in a context of at least five city/county-based granting and commissioning organizations and I worked on projects in the $8K-$20K range for individual artists. Right now I’m learning how to work with foundations because almost all

of my prior experience has been in the public arts funding sphere, but in general I think fundraising is a really difficult skill set for emerging artists to learn and sets up a barrier to entry for emerging and individual artists. I think that there’s a real desire for Dallas to become a culturally relevant city such as New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. But the model that Dallas abides by has been to import culture from other cities and to showcase that culture. However, this is not why New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. are considered culturally relevant cities. They’re considered culturally relevant because relevant, innovative, and artistic production happens there. For Dallas to become truly culturally relevant, it needs to invest in local cultural production and it needs to prioritize critical, experimental, innovative art-making. This means trusting artists, giving them the resources, and committing to being part of a larger discourse on contemporary art.

Trans.lation is made possible with the generous support of Joanne L. Cassullo and the Dorothea Leonhardt Fund of the Communities Foundation of Texas.

KATHRYN ANDREWS & NAN COULTER IN LOS ANGELES

This portrait of Los Angeles-based artist Kathryn Andrews was photographed on June 27, 2016â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a time of heightened political and celebrity spectacle. p

by NAN COULTER

Joel Shapiro’s

Waxahachie Whirl Wherein the celebrated New York artist escapes Dallas for a very fast day of folk art, Mexican food, and cowboy hats — in a $200,000 Aston Martin. (Now you know where the fast part comes in.) Writer Rob Brinkley and photographer Allison V. Smith hang on for the ride.

MAY 5, 2016, 10:16 A.M.

Outside the Nasher Sculpture Center on a sunny, blue May morning, Joel Shapiro slides into the leathery cockpit of an Aston Martin DB9 GT. The conveyance has been the artist’s loaner car from Aston Martin of Dallas while in town for the opening of his site-specific Nasher installation, Joel Shapiro, May 7 through August 21. He slips the car’s key into the ignition slot. The V-12 engine burbles to life. We haven’t moved an inch and Shapiro pokes a suspension-setting button labeled Sport. He grins a Cheshire grin. “Anything but Sport is a bore!” And we’re off.

10:30-SOMETHING

With all 540 horses of the Aston Martin’s engine at a gallop that could land us in the hoosegow, Shapiro waxes about his Texas childhood. He lived here until about age 5 because his father was the head of medical services at Fort Wolters, the large Army camp near Mineral Wells. He remembers swimming in the Brazos River.