#hirshhorn

Happy Birthday to Henry Moore, born on this day in 1898! 

During the 1950s he devised many compositions of seated figures, usually in pairs or groups, which allude to the renewal of life in postwar Britain. The couple depicted in “King and Queen,” however, has greater public significance. The subject emerged as Moore worked on figures inspired by an Egyptian Seated Royal Couple from the eighteenth century B.C., a sculpture displayed in the British Museum. The serenity and stateliness of Moore’s figures, completed in the same year as the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, may also reaffirm Britain’s monarchy as a symbol of continuity and triumph after the country’s near destruction by war. 

Explore more: http://s.si.edu/2v4Jk1W

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.” 

Happy Birthday to Marcel Duchamp, born on this day in 1887! 

Portrait by Bert Stern, 1967. 

“Light reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors,” ~ Alma Thomas

“Skylight” 1973 http://s.si.edu/2d41TbS

Happy National Pumpkin Day! 

We can’t wait to step into this pumpkin-filled wonderland by Yayoi Kusama. Opening Feb. 23, 2017, our Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors exhibition explores the evolution of her immersive, multireflective installations over more than five decades.   

Photo: “Infinity Mirrored Room – All the Eternal Love I Have for the Pumpkins” 2016

“What I would rather do is to paint something beautiful.”

Happy Birthday to Alma Thomas, born on this day in 1891!

“Earth Sermon - Beauty, Love And Peace” 1971

Happy 83rd Birthday to Mark di Suvero!

One of America’s most important living sculptors, Mark di Suvero is renowned for his monumental open-work constructions. Using cast-off materials such as ladders, chains, and metal bars, he devised a robust, geometric style of abstract sculpture in the early 1960s. Later, using I-beams, he developed an assertively industrial aesthetic that pays homage to modern engineering and the skills of construction workers. With a few massive elements, he creates compositions ranging in effect from lyrical to muscular.

 The 10-ton “Are Years What?” was the first sculpture di Suvero built using I-beams and a crane from start to finish. He worked intuitively and alone as he cut, bent, and welded the beams to achieve his desired effect. Despite its massive size, Are Years What? exhibits a subtle tension between the powerful stability of the main structure and the delicate freedom of the suspended ‘V’ element. The sculpture’s title alludes to the poem “What Are Years” by American poet Marianne Moore (1887-1972), which ends with the image of a captive bird that becomes mighty and sure as it sings, evoking the valor of living in the face of our mortality.

Happy Birthday to Jean Arp, born on this day in 1886!

In 1916, inspired by forms and growth patterns in the natural world, Arp invented the new style of organic abstraction that would later be adopted by Surrealists and other artists. Seen from various angles, this abstract sculpture suggests a muscular male torso, the moon’s cratered surface, or even a ghostly apparition. “Evocation of a Form: Human, Lunar, Spectral” (1950) is on view in our sculpture garden!

Happy 88th Birthday to Robert Indiana, born on this day in 1928!

His original print of the commissioned poster for our Inaugural Exhibition, October 1974.

“It’s not about the object, it’s about the inquiry." 

Happy 88th Birthday, Robert Irwin! 

His monumental exhibition, "All the Rule Will Change,” just closed last week. In this work, Irwin sought to break the traditional frame – to create an artwork that doesn’t begin and end at the edge. By casting shadows onto convex discs, it is difficult to discern the precise boundaries of the work, placing us in a state of perceptual flux. As Hirshhorn curator Evelyn Hankins writes, “Without the shadows, the work is incomplete.” Explore more on our website: http://hirshhorn.si.edu/robert-irwin

Remembering Sol LeWitt, born on this day in 1928. 

Like other artists associated with Minimalism and Conceptualism, LeWitt sought a means of direct and objective expression. He often produced works in series using a simple modular unit—in this case, the open cube—to create hundreds of artworks that articulate the possible variations and configurations. Consisting of systematically arranged rows and stacks of cubes, 13/11 is one of LeWitt’s three-dimensional “structures.” With its complex lattice of white lines and gray shadows, the work is as visually compelling as it is formally precise.

Happy Birthday to Romare Bearden, born on this day 1914. Bearden produced artwork with roots in Social Realism, medieval stained glass windows, Cubism, and Abstract Expressionism before finding his strongest voice in collage. For inspiration he turned to childhood memories of his birthplace, he grew up in Harlem and Pittsburgh, and the rituals he encountered there. During his first year of producing collages, Bearden created “The Prevalence of Ritual: Baptism” (1964). The fractured figures reference Cubism, and the variety of collage elements and scale establish a sense of motion like the syncopated rhythms of jazz.

Happy National Dog Day! Alberto Giacometti described his “Dog” (1951) sculpture as a form of self-portrait: 

“One day I was walking along the rue de Vanves in the rain, close to the walls of the buildings, with my head down, feeling a little sad, perhaps, and I felt like a dog just then. So I made that sculpture. But it’s not really a likeness at all. Only the sad muzzle is anything of a likeness." 

On view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection:  http://hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/masterworks/

We’re celebrating World Photography Day with Thomas Struth’s “Pergamon Museum I, Berlin,” on view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection!

Following a period living in Naples and Rome in the late 1980s,German photographer Thomas Struth began to document museumgoers around the world encountering art historical masterworks. It was a premise in which the artist saw “the potential for including a marriage of a contemporary moment and a historical moment in one photographic place.” Most images from the series were candid, but this view from within Berlin’s Pergamon Museum, which houses reconstructions of monumental buildings from antiquity, was staged by the photographer. 

(Chromogenic print face-mounted on acrylic, 2001)

We’re excited to announce a five city tour across the US and Canada for “Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors”! Following its debut at the Hirshhorn Feb. 23- May 14, 2017, the @seattleartmuseum, The Broad, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Cleveland Museum of Art will host the artist’s first North American tour in 20 Years.  

Learn more about this upcoming exhibition: http://hirshhorn.si.edu/infinitekusama 

Photo: “Infinity Mirror Room—Phalli’s Field” 1965, in Floor Show, Castellane Gallery, New York, 1965. Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore; Victoria Miro, London; David Zwirner, New York. © Yayoi Kusama.

Remembering sculptor Viola Frey, born on this day in 1933.

Learn more about her monumental ceramic figures in this new website: http://violafrey.org/

“Family Portrait” 1995, glazed ceramic

Happy Birthday to George Bellows, born on this day in 1882.  

George Bellows painted portraits, seascapes, and scenes of urban life. Among his most celebrated works are six paintings from 1907 to 1908 that depict prizefighting as the sport then existed in New York: a backroom activity relegated to private clubs. By 1924, when Bellows painted “Ringside Seats,” boxing had become a public, if still brutal, contest. This painting presents the sporting arena as a scene of complex psychological and physical action.

On this day in 1974, Joseph Hirshhorn’s sculpture collection arrived!

Beginning August 5, Hirshhorn’s sculpture collection was moved from his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Many of the pieces were brought to the Garden via helicopter, including Rodin’s “Burghers of Calais,” which weighs several thousand pounds.

Remembering Marcel Duchamp, born on this day in 1887.

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.”

Portrait by Bert Stern 1967

“I am essentially a painter of the kind of still-life composition that communicates a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else…”

Celebrating the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi, who was born on this day in 1890. “Still Life” (1943)