This year the NGV, in partnership with The Museum of Modern Art New York, is presenting MoMA at NGV: 130 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art as the 2018 Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition. From 9th June–7th Oct 2018, the exhibition is providing a unique survey of the Museum’s iconic collection. The key works are arranged chronologically into 8 thematic sections, tracing the development of art and design from late-C19th urban and industrial transformation, until the global present.
MoMA is dedicated to championing innovative modern and contemporary art. The Museum opened in Manhattan in 1929, with the plan to become the greatest modern art museum in the world. This is seen in its inter-disciplinary collection of c200,000 works by c10,000 artists, shared between 6 curatorial departments: Architecture & Design, Drawings and Prints, Film, Media & Performance Art, Painting & Sculpture & Photography
This Melbourne exhibition features c200 works from MoMA, including some never-before-seen in Australia. Starting in fin-de-siecle Paris, the emergence of a new art at the dawn of the C20th is represented by some of MoMA’s earliest acquisitions, including masterworks by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Paul Cézanne.
Cezanne, Still Life with Apples, 1896
Paintings and posters are displayed with objects from MoMA’s Architecture and Design collection, many of which draw out issues common to architects, designers and artists — creating a new visual language for the modern era. These include: an architectural model by Le Corbusier that featured in MoMA’s first architecture exhibition in 1932; graphic designs, furniture and textiles by artists involved in the influential workshops of my beloved Bauhaus. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, for example, used metals and industrial methods not common in fine art then. Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer are also included in the exhibition.
Works by pioneering cubists & futurists eg Pablo Picasso appear next to the radically abstracted forms present in artists like Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Then we see the surreal visual language of artists like Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo, and the spontaneity advanced in works by Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock and other prominent Abstract Expressionists. Then see Marcel Duchamp, Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Roy Lichtenstein.
Paintings and posters are displayed with objects from MoMA’s Architecture and Design collection, many of which draw out issues common to architects, designers and artists — creating a new visual language for the modern era. These include: an architectural model by Le Corbusier that featured in MoMA’s first architecture exhibition in 1932; graphic designs, furniture and textiles by artists involved in the influential workshops of my beloved Bauhaus. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, for example, used metals and industrial methods not common in fine art then. Josef Albers and Marcel Breuer are also included in the exhibition.
Works by pioneering cubists & futurists eg Pablo Picasso appear next to the radically abstracted forms present in artists like Kazimir Malevich and Piet Mondrian. Then we see the surreal visual language of artists like Salvador Dalí and Frida Kahlo, and the spontaneity advanced in works by Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock and other prominent Abstract Expressionists. Then see Marcel Duchamp, Edward Hopper, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko and Roy Lichtenstein.
Picasso, Architect’s Table, 1912
Finally, newer developments in art, from Minimalism to Post Modernism and into early C21th art, display ideas at the NGV that inform cultural and national identity.
The exhibition explores the growth of major art movements and represents 130+ years of radical artistic innovation. It reflects the wider technological, social & political movements that transformed C20th society and contributed to the formation of our C21st globalised world. And it reveals the ways in which artists have sought to be agents of change, transforming society and creating new worlds. There is a scholarly catalogue, a programme of talks, tours and events, and the curated NGV Friday Nights programmes.
MoMA in New York is the perfect supplier of innovative art because it is the major museum of modern art anywhere, attracting 3+ million visitors annually. MoMA was the first museum to recognise photography, cinema, architecture and industrial design as dedicated departments that belong in an art museum.
Finally, newer developments in art, from Minimalism to Post Modernism and into early C21th art, display ideas at the NGV that inform cultural and national identity.
The exhibition explores the growth of major art movements and represents 130+ years of radical artistic innovation. It reflects the wider technological, social & political movements that transformed C20th society and contributed to the formation of our C21st globalised world. And it reveals the ways in which artists have sought to be agents of change, transforming society and creating new worlds. There is a scholarly catalogue, a programme of talks, tours and events, and the curated NGV Friday Nights programmes.
MoMA in New York is the perfect supplier of innovative art because it is the major museum of modern art anywhere, attracting 3+ million visitors annually. MoMA was the first museum to recognise photography, cinema, architecture and industrial design as dedicated departments that belong in an art museum.
Kahlo, Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, 1940
The National Gallery of Victoria 1861 is the perfect recipient of innovative art because it is oldest and most visited public art museum in Australia. The collection has 70,000+ art works from many centuries and cultures! Additionally the 2018 Winter Masterpieces Exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of the new NGV’s St Kilda Road galleries.
The National Gallery of Victoria 1861 is the perfect recipient of innovative art because it is oldest and most visited public art museum in Australia. The collection has 70,000+ art works from many centuries and cultures! Additionally the 2018 Winter Masterpieces Exhibition marks the 50th anniversary of the new NGV’s St Kilda Road galleries.
6 comments:
I am very much looking forward to seeing the exhibition. MoMA is just brilliant.
Change and modernity are not linear or predictable, are they. How did the two galleries select which modern art movements to include?
Andrew
it IS brilliant. In this morning's Australian, MoMA's art director Glenn Lowry wrote that MoMA's mission has changed dramatically across the decades. The founding director in 1929, Alfred Barr, helped define the concept of modernism at a time when galleries treated modern art as an afterthought.
I did too *blush*. I thought that if art movements hadn't existed by WW1, they weren't worth studying.
We Travel
modernity is such a slippery concept, yes. I wouldn't have even known when to start the MoMA Exhibition of Modern and Contemporary Art - with the Impressionists? Expressionists? Fauvists? or with Cubism? Futurism? De Stijl? Dada.....?
So people will examine the exhibition and make their own comments about omissions etc.
Hello Hels, An exhibit on this scale is an embarrassment of riches! The most difficult task would be to organize the exhibits in your mind so that some sense is made of all these threads of modern art. I am sure this is an occasion that will call for many repeat visits.
I wonder if they included Edward Hopper's iconic House by the Railroad, which needless to say is one of my favorites. I understand that it was the very first painting that MOMA accessioned. (Incidentally, I have some issues with Wikipedia and other sources' discussion of this painting, especially architecturally!)
--Jim
Parnassus
yes! it is IMPOSSIBLE to organise all the exhibits in my mind. That is why important exhibitions normally tackle smaller and more defined themes eg "van Gogh's life and work 1888–90."
Thank goodness the NGV will be presenting the key works chronologically and in 8 thematic sections. In any case I have a limited concentration span and after 2.5 hours, my eyes go to mush. So I suspect that a repeat visit will definitely be necessary.
Re the individual art objects that are included in the Melbourne Exhibition, either wait for me or others to visit the gallery in late June, or buy the excellent catalogue on line. Well worth following up.
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