Events of the Week: Warhol's Flowers, Frederic Church, Designer Richard Keith Langham & More

DESIGN

New York Botanical Garden’s Orchid Dinner

February 7, 2018

Grand Ballroom at the Plaza, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, NYC

https://www.nybg.org/event/the-orchid-dinner

The New York Botanical Garden will host its annual Orchid Dinner on Wednesday, February 7, 2018. The historic landmark hotel, The Plaza, will be the stage for a magnificent showcase of orchid centerpieces created by the world’s leading designers from the worlds of fashion, interior design, landscape design, floral design, and architecture. During the cocktail hour, guests partake in a sale of exceptional and rare orchids carefully selected by NYBG’s curators and bid on exclusive Silent Auction items. All proceeds from the Dinner underwrite the development of the Garden’s orchid research collection, which helps maintain the highest horticultural standards of orchid conservation. To support the mission with any amount, click here: Click here for information on tickets.

Luncheon with Designer Richard Keith Langham
February 9, 2018
Cap’t. James Missroon House, Historic Charleston Foundation, Charleston, S.C.
https://www.historiccharleston.org

One of America’s leading designers, Richard Keith Langham, will set the stage for the 15th Annual Charleston Antiques Show during the Spring Luncheon Lecture on Friday, February 9, 2018. Langham’s stylish and comfortable rooms, rich with lush color, pattern and a mix of old and new, embody his signature couture detailing. A former client, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, complimented Langham for his “sorcerer’s eye” when it comes to design. Proceeds from all Charleston Antiques Show events benefit the Historic Charleston Foundation. 

SHOWS

Art Rotterdam 2018
February 8-11, 2018
Van Nellefabriek, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.artrotterdam.com

Art Rotterdam is once again the pivot of the Art Rotterdam Week this year. The entire city is brimming with exhibitions, pop-up shows, openings and art and design fairs. The free Art Rotterdam Week shuttle bus will take attendees to the highlights of the program. 

Art Rotterdam remains a place where the latest developments in visual arts can be followed. The Main Section, where some 75 national and international galleries display work of upcoming and more established artists, continues to be the heart of the fair. The other sections will be structured by a young or renowned curator. This year, Intersections’ performances and installations are now presented in a new section of the fair. Commonities, where the renowned exhibition maker Lorenzo Benedetti brings artists together, can also be found in this section. citizenM Cinema will also have a prominent place in the extension where Hans den Hartog Jager will once again explain his favorite works at the fair.

The Original Miami Beach Antiques Show

February 9-12, 2018

Miami Fair Expo Center, Miami, FL

https://originalmiamibeachantiqueshow.com

As America’s largest indoor antique show, The Original Miami Antique Show presents more than 600 recognized dealers from 28 countries for four days only. More than 18,000 attendees with a serious interest in antiques and jewelry will explore collections from Renaissance to Art Deco eras including fine art, American and European silver, antique jewelry, 17th-19th century furniture, porcelain and more. The 80-acre venue features four exhibit halls with multiple entry points for attendees. The new venue aligns with U.S. Antique Shows’ goal to enrich the community by creating a unique marketplace and promoting antique education in south Florida. An educational conference, The Jewelry History Series @ The Original Miami Antique, will center around the history of jewelry during select time periods and will be held February 7-8 ahead of the show. Click here for more information. 

San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show

February 9-11; preview February 8, 2018

Fort Mason Center, Festival Pavilion, San Francisco, CA|

http://sanfranciscotribalandtextileartshow.com

The San Francisco Tribal & Textile Art Show, now in its 32nd year, is the premiere show of its kind in the United States. More than 70 dealers will offer works range from the finest textiles and rugs from North Africa, Asia, North America, and India through remarkable stone and wood carvings from Indonesia, Africa, and Oceania. Works also span millennia, with carvings and pottery from prehistoric South America to the exquisite Wounaan contemporary basketry handmade in Panama today by the indigenous Wounaan tribe, employing ancient weaving traditions passed through generations of indigenous peoples in the Darién rainforest.

Beginning in 2017 the show began a series of featured countries, with Indonesia being the first. Australia is this year’s feature, with its rich history in Tribal arts. An expansive exhibit will frame the entrance of the show and highlight not only art and the artists represented, but also provide a bridge to Australian culture through music, food and products. A series of  six special exhibitions will be held, including “Australia: Defending the Oceans,” a series of contemporary Australian Aboriginal artworks shown for the first time on the West Coast; and “Germantown Navajo Weavings: First Modern Art.”

EXHIBITIONS

Inventur: Art in Germany, 1943-55
February 9-June 3, 2018
Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA
https://www.harvardartmuseums.org

The first exhibition of its kind, Inventur examines the highly charged artistic landscape in Germany from the mid-1940s to mid-1950s. Taking its name from a 1945 poem by Günter Eich, the exhibition focuses on modern art created at a time when Germans were forced to acknowledge and reckon with the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust, the country’s defeat and occupation by the Allies, and the ideological ramifications of the fledgling Cold War. Chosen for the way it helps characterize the art of this period, the word Inventur (inventory) implies not just an artistic stocktaking, but a physical and moral one as well—the reassurance of one’s own existence as reflected in the stuff of everyday life. The exhibition, too, “takes stock,” introducing the richness and variety of the modern art of this period to new audiences, while prompting broader questions on the role of the creative individual living under totalitarianism and in its wake.

Inventur includes more than 160 works, encompassing nearly 50 artists; many of the works have never been on view outside Germany. The exhibition draws from the Harvard Art Museums’ Busch-Reisinger and Fogg collections and is complemented by works from more than 50 public and private collections in the United States and in Germany. It includes key artists from across Germany who worked in an array of media: photography, collage, photomontage, drawing, painting, sculpture, and commercial design.

Egyptian, Ibis, 26th Dynasty (664-525 CE). Bronze, 6 7/8 x 8 11/16 in. Gift of Sir Henry Rawlinson through Dwight W. Marsh, Class of 1842, by exchange. Courtesy Williams College Museum of Art.

RAWR! 

Through September 23, 2018
Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA), Williamstown, MA
https://wcma.williams.edu

For centuries, artists have depicted the diverse and intimate nature of humans’ relationship to animals. Wild and domestic beasts have served as deities and food sources; as objects of ornament or sacrifice; as companion or curiosity. RAWR! considers how art has helped to create arbitrary distinctions between the human and the animal. Artists—both consciously and inadvertently—provide insight into the inner lives of animals, and interrogate our ethical responsibilities to other species and to ourselves. Works from the Williams College Museum of Art’s encyclopedic collection explore the representation of animals in art and artifacts across time and across the globe. RAWR! is presented in conjunction with Philosophy 216: The Philosophy of Animals taught by Professor Joseph Cruz at Williams College. The course will use the works of art in the exhibition in their philosophical inquiries into animal cognition, empathy and evolution, language in non-human animals, cross-cultural views on animals, and animal rights. 

Frederic Church: A Painter’s Pilgrimage
February 9-May 13, 2018
Reynolda House Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem, N.C.
http://reynoldahouse.org

This exhibition is the first to explore Frederic Edwin Church’s paintings inspired by his travels to ancient sites in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. More than 50 paintings, oil studies, and drawings from the late 1860s through the early 1880s will be on view.

The most popular artist in mid-19th-century America, Church took landscape painting to new heights of grandeur and was best known for his large, visually stunning paintings of American scenes as well as views of South America, the North Atlantic, and the Caribbean. But from 1867 until the end of his life, many of Church’s most important paintings represented ancient cities or buildings that he saw during his 1867–69 trip to the Middle East, Rome, and Athens. While Church’s paintings of the New World focused on the natural world, his works from the Old World explored human history. The exhibition brings together nearly all of Church’s most important paintings of the Mediterranean region and Holy Land in order to explore this major shift in his artistic practice. A half-day symposium will be held on April 21, 2018 in conjunction with the exhibition. 

Casanova: The Seduction of Europe
February 10-May 28, 2018
Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

http://legionofhonor.famsf.org/exhibitions

Final venue: Generally thought of as a charismatic braggart and womanizer whose autobiography was so scandalous that it was placed on the Vatican’s Index of Prohibited Books, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (1725-1798), was, in addition to the above “attributes,” a charismatic and witty intellectual who conversed with Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin, and other luminaries of his day. Constantly reinventing himself, Casanova was a spy, alchemist, astrologer, mathematician, traveler, and man of letters who comfortably navigated the social and political landscape of his day (even authoring a proto-feminist pamphlet). He was, in point, a man of the Enlightenment.  

During his lifetime, the native Venetian lived in or traveled to many of the principle art centers of eighteenth-century Europe. Taking Casanova as a guide, The Seduction of Europe shows approximately 200 works of art structured around the chronology, geography, and major incidents of Casanova’s colorful life, addressing such themes as courtship and seduction, theater, dining, and travel. In addition to paintings, the exhibition includes sculpture, prints, drawings, musical instruments, furniture and decorative arts, some of which are set within vignettes. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated catalog.

Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987), Flowers, ca. 1967. Color silkscreen on paper, 36 1/16 x 36 in. (91.6 x 91.5 cm). Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA: Gift of Tennyson and Fern Schad, Class of 1952 (84.17.1). © 2017 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Warhol: Flowers in the Factory
February 11-June 30, 2018

Marie Selby Botanical Gardens, Sarasota Bay, Florida
https://selby.org

Consummately cosmopolitan and cool, Andy Warhol in the great outdoors seems like an oxymoron. Yet the groundbreaking artist known for his Pop Art multiples of celebrities and soup cans created more than 10,000 images of flowers over the course of his career. Warhol: Flowers in the Factory showcases the surprising, and little examined, role of nature in Warhol’s art and life. The spectacular 15-acre tropical setting of Marie Selby Botanical Gardens on Sarasota Bay will provide a matchless context for examining Warhol’s fascination with the natural world in this focused, immersive exhibition.

The centerpieces of this innovative exhibition are four of the artist’s silkscreens entitled Flowers, on generous loan from the Williams College Museum of Art. Begun in the mid-1960s in his studio dubbed the Factory, the series of flower silkscreens represented Warhol’s debut at the avant-garde Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, whose stable of contemporary artists included Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Frank Stella. These striking prints are among the artist’s first works to defy a clear sense of orientation – they have no obvious top and bottom – and meld a range of techniques and media, namely silkscreen, pencil, acrylics and Day-Glo Paint.

OF NOTE: A Revolutionary Gift & Filipowski Book

American Revolutionary Documents
Historic Deerfield Receives Gift
http://www.historic-deerfield.org

Historic Deerfield, Inc., Deerfield, Massachusetts, recently received a gift of important materials from the years of the Revolutionary War relating to the Porter family of Hadley, Massachusetts. The papers, gifted by Samuel and David Cooley and having directly descended in the family, come from two brothers, Eleazar Porter (1728-1797) and Elisha Porter (1742-1796). Elisha was a Harvard College graduate who served in the Revolutionary War as the colonel of the Fourth Hampshire Regiment (Western Massachusetts), participating in the battles of Bunker Hill and Saratoga, and serving in Canada and New London. Elisha was charged with escorting General John Burgoyne of the British Army to Boston after his surrender at Saratoga. Among the documents signed by historic figures (including Benedict Arnold and John Hancock) is a letter from February 10, 1776, signed by General George Washington at Cambridge instructing Colonel Porter to move his regiment north to Canada via Fort Number Four and Onion River in relief of Montgomery/Arnold's failed expeditions. In addition, the materials include correspondence with local dignitaries, broadsides, muster rolls, receipts regarding equipping troops, and military clothing. 

On sale February 6, 2018
Richard Filipowski: Art and Design Beyond Bauhaus
Monacelli Press; edited by Marisa Bartolucci; 264 pp; 300 illus. 

http://www.monacellipress.com/book

Exhibition of Filipowski's work: Hostler Burrows Gallery, NYC
April 4-25, 2018; opening reception on April 4, 5-8 pm; public welcome
https://www.incollect.com/professionals/dealers/hostlerburrows

Book party, discussion, and signing on April 19, 6-8 pm; public welcome

Rizzoli Bookstore, 1133 Broadway, NYC

Richard Filipowski (1923-2008) was among the most gifted polymaths in the annals of American modernism. Whether as a painter, sculptor, or designer of furniture and jewelry, Filipowski developed a lush, abstract, and amazingly consistent visual language that marks him among the finest figures of mid-century art and design. As a student at the Institute of Design (formerly the New Bauhaus) in Chicago, he quickly became a protégé of founder László Moholy-Nagy, who featured several of Filipowski's works in his seminal text Vision in Motion (1947); Filipowski was the only student Moholy-Nagy called upon to join the faculty, where he taught alongside Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer. Recruited by Gropius to develop a course in design fundamentals at Harvard, which remains a cornerstone of design pedagogy to this day, he would move to MIT where he taught for more than three decades, until his retirement in 1988. Richard Filipowski: Art and Design Beyond Bauhaus is the first monograph and a rich document of the life and career of this modern master.