NEW: 2013 - 2014 Exhibition Schedule
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Luminous: 50 Years of Collecting Prints and Drawings at the Blanton
June 8 - September 15, 2013.
Raffaello Sanzio, called Raphael
The Holy Family, 1508-09
Pen and brown ink with graphite (later addition) on cream antique laid paper, 4 5/8in. x 4 in.
The Suida-Manning Collection, 487.1999
As a way to honor the Blanton’s fiftieth anniversary, Luminous showcases some of the finest prints and drawings from Europe and the Americas in the collection. The term luminous is often used to define a work on paper of high quality as well as an illustrious legacy. Many generous supporters, such as Leo Steinberg, John and Barbara Duncan, and Mari and James A. Michener, gifted their large private collections to the Blanton. Private foundations and alumni also provided substantial funds for important purchases such as the Suida-Manning Collection, which includes four hundred Old Master drawings.
Over five decades, individuals and foundations along with the university’s administration and faculty have understood the importance of great art not only to inspire innovative scholarship but also to stimulate imaginations and foster rich and varied lives on UT’s campus and in the city of Austin. Today, prints and drawings comprise ninety percent of the museum’s holdings. Luminous presents some of these extraordinary works on paper, including drawings by Raphael, Sonia Delaunay, and Diego Rivera and prints by Rembrandt van Rijn, Pablo Picasso, and Ana Mendieta. Read more about Luminous ...
Luminous: 50 Years of Collecting Prints and Drawings at the Blanton is organized by the Blanton Museum of Art.
Lifelike
June 23 - September 22, 2013
Maurizio Cattelan
Untitled, 2001
Stainless steel, composition wood,electric motor,
electric light, electric bell, computer
23 1/2 x 33 5/8 x 185/8 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York
This international, multigenerational group exhibition considers the continued relevance of realism in contemporary art. From arresting paintings based on off-handed snapshots, to meticulously handcrafted sculptures of unremarkable objects, the artists in Lifelike transform the commonplace into something infused with narrative and metaphor, often mining unsettling terrain within the familiar.
Organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the exhibition surveys more than 80 works by over 40 artists from 13 countries, including Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, and Ai Weiwei. Read more about Lifelike ...
Lifelike is organized by the Walker Art Center and made possible by generous support from John L. Thomson and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
Generous funding for this exhibition at the Blanton is provided by Jeanne and Michael Klein, with additional support from George and Nicole Jeffords.
Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475-1540
October 5, 2013 - January 5, 2014.
Hans Holbein the Elder
Portrait of a Woman, 1508
Silverpoint, brush and black and brown ink, and black chalk heightened with white on white prepared paper
5 11/16 x 4 1/16 in.
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Woodner Collection, 1991.182.18.a
The city of Augsburg, in southwest Bavaria, was founded as a Roman settlement during the reign of emperor Augustus (15 BC). By the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the city, due to its strategic location on the north-south trade routes to Italy, became a prosperous center of manufacturing. At the same time, Augsburg witnessed the rise of the great banking houses of the Fugger and the Welser. Together these circumstances combined to foster an important and diverse artistic community, which had an established tradition in the printing and metalworking industries. During the reign of Emperor Maximilian I (1459-1519), Augsburg became the location of the Imperial Council and the center from which the emperor organized all of his print and armor commissions. Augsburg artists greatly benefited from the commissions of the Hapsburg court, and, at the same time created works for the thriving art market.
This exhibition, organized by the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. with loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and other private and public collections, will emphasize the rich and varied world of works of art on paper produced in Renaissance Augsburg (1475 – 1540), paying particular attention to innovative printmaking techniques as well as the fundamental role of imperial patronage in furthering these activities. It will also address how, as a wealthy city with commercial ties to Italy, Augsburg was one of the first German cities to emulate the new Italian Renaissance style as well as its cultivation of humanism and the revival of antiquity.
Imperial Augsburg: Renaissance Prints and Drawings, 1475-1540 is organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington.
The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas
October 27, 2013 - January 12, 2014
Waltercio Caldas
A emoção estética [Aesthetic Emotion], 1977
Painted iron and shoes on carpet
5 7/8 x 118 1/9 x 118 1/9 in.
Private Collection, Rio de Janeiro
The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin and the Fundação Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre, Brazil have joined together to organize the first comprehensive career survey of one of Brazil’s most important contemporary artists: Waltercio Caldas. The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas will explore the artist’s full body of work, from the 1960s through the present, and will investigate Caldas’s centrality within Brazilian art, his role on the international stage, and his unique position on art and its ethos. Following its recent presentation at two Brazilian venues—the Fundação Iberê Camargo in Porto Alegre and the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo—the expanded exhibition will have its North American premiere at the Blanton in Fall 2013.
Working in a variety of mediums, Caldas examines the physical qualities of objects and spaces, challenging the assumptions viewers bring to the act of looking. He defines his practice as the act of sculpting the distance between objects, inverting the conventional definition of sculpture as a dense, self-contained volume. Above all, simplicity and formal precision define his art, qualities that speak to his aim to produce what he describes as "maximally present work through minimal action." His installation The Nearest Air (1991), in which suspended lengths of red and blue yarn radically transform empty space, epitomizes these concerns and exemplifies Caldas’s predilection for poetic and ambiguous titles. Another hallmark of his practice is the production of artist’s books, a body of work that illustrates Caldas’s playful use of the written word and his interest in art history, philosophy, and systems of knowledge. Caldas elaborates on the work of numerous modernist predecessors and draws knowingly from a wide range of Brazilian and international references. The exhibition will bring to light an artist whose work broadens the scope of traditional art historical discourse, while actively challenging viewers to question their perceptions of space and notions of reality.
The exhibition catalog, Waltercio Caldas, will be the first illustrated English-language publication to fully explore Caldas’s four-decade artistic trajectory, his influences, and his impact. The book, to be co-published by the Blanton Museum of Art and The University of Texas Press, features insightful essays by distinguished art critics Richard Shiff and Robert Storr, as well as by exhibition guest curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro.
The Nearest Air: A Survey of Works by Waltercio Caldas is co-organized by the Blanton Museum of Art and the Fundação Iberê Camargo.
The exhibition is guest-curated by Gabriel Perez-Barreiro.
Generous funding for the exhibition is provided by the Susan Vaughan Foundation, with additional support from Patricia Phelps de Cisneros and the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation. The accompanying catalog is made possible in part by Michael Chesser.