Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec Archives

Muse/News: Spotting Calder, The Other Curtis, and Smith’s Curation

Rachel Eggers on Nov 20 2023

SAM News

“Seattle Art Museum Becomes the Alexander Calder Destination with Shirley Family Collection”: Chadd Scott of Forbes tells you everything you need to know about Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection and the future of Calder exploration at SAM.

“By any standard, Calder is an essential. He’s one of the few artists who most people have seen, even if they don’t know it, or his name. They’ve seen his work on the street or in a museum or in a book or on TV. And once introduced, they’ll never forget it–‘oh, that’s a Calder!’”

Ann Binlot of Galerie highlighted the journey of Jon Shirley’s collecting of Calders.

“‘He created a whole new art form,’ said the collector. ‘He created sculpture that’s open to hang in space and incidentally move. There’s just something about how my brain works that I really enjoyed being with the works.’”

José Carlos Diaz, exhibition curator and Susan Brotman Deputy Director for Art, appeared on New Day NW to fill host Amity Addrisi in on this exciting moment at SAM when you can see both Hokusai: Inspiration and Influence and Calder: In Motion.

And at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, you’ve got just two weeks left to see Renegade Edo and Paris! Here’s Bob Knetzger for Boing Boing’s take on the prints exhibition.

“It’s a real treat to get to see up close the amazingly precise and exquisitely small Japanese woodcuts—and have them right next to the GIANT lithographed posters advertising Parisian shows and entertainers.”

Local News

The Seattle Times’ Tat Bellamy-Walker—along with videographers Kevin Clark & Lauren Frohne—sits in on a rehearsal of the Jafra Dabke Team, a Seattle-based Palestinian dance group, who performed at LANGSTON this weekend as part of a cultural education and community event.

“Ties that bind”: Shannon M. Lieberman for Oregon ArtsWatch on a new gallery show of works by Omak, Washington-based Joe Feddersen.

Knute Berger and Stephen Hegg revisit an earlier Mossback Northwest episode, “The Other Curtis Brother,” examining the regional photographer Asahel Curtis. It turns out that the episode generated many new Curtis finds from the public, which the Washington State Historical Society is working to digitize.

“The digitization is going well but slowly, Berger reports: ‘They can do about a hundred images a day.’ But amazing discoveries are being made already: ‘They’re finding everything from news photos [to] promotional photos of landscapes, pictures of all kinds of people in all walks of life.’”

Inter/National News

Via Brian Boucher of Artnet: “Help! 7 Times People Got Trapped Inside Artworks—Whether by Choice or by Accident.”

“Meet the African Artists Driving a Cultural Renaissance”: Dive into this New York Times multimedia project by Abdi Latif Dahir and Veronica Chambers, part of a larger series on “how Africa’s youth boom is changing the continent, and beyond.”

ARTnews’ Alex Greenberger on the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition of contemporary Native art, “organized with grace” by the artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. (Hot tip: you can see Smith’s dazzling retrospective at SAM next spring!)

“[The exhibition] proves that Native American artists cannot be pigeonholed into one aesthetic—or even one medium—and that their output has taken up the painful remnants of colonialism via a range of subjects. Smith’s exhibition also demonstrates that the struggle for land rights continues to impact not just the objects these artists make, but their outlook on the world as well.”

And Finally

Still digging in the archives thanks to the Calder Foundation: “Sculpture and Constructions, 1944 by Herbert Matter.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Image: Installation view of Calder: In Motion, The Shirley Family Collection, Seattle Art Museum, 2023, © 2023 Calder Foundation, New York / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Dr. Saloni Mathur on the Life and Legacy of Amrita Sher-Gil

Seattle Art Museum on Nov 7 2023

SAM’s Gardner Center for Asian Art and Ideas presents the 2023–24 season of the Saturday University Lecture Series, exploring various topics loosely inspired by the exhibition Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. This month, Dr. Saloni Mathur, Professor and Chair of the Department of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, will offer a discussion on the paintings of revolutionary 20th-century South Asian artist Amrita Sher-Gil on Saturday, November 11. In advance of her talk, SAM spoke with Mathur about her reaction to seeing Amrita Sher-Gil’s Self-Portrait as Tahitian for the first time, its similarities with Native contemporary artist Wendy Red Star’s Four Seasons series, and more.

SAM: What can the public expect to learn about in your upcoming Saturday University lecture? What initially drew you to this topic?

SALONI MATHUR: I will be speaking about Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941), the part-Indian, part-Hungarian painter who stands at the cosmopolitan helm of modern Indian art. She was the first Indian to receive artistic training in Paris, attending the École des Beaux-Arts from 1929 to 1932. The biracial, bicultural, and bisexual artist was described recently by Time Magazine as “shockingly modern.” My talk will focus on her extraordinary painting, Self-Portrait as Tahitian (1934), in which she was supposedly responding to Gauguin’s stylization of the female nude.

I remember experiencing a sense of vertigo after first encountering this painting in response to the dizzying set of questions it raised. What were the conditions that made possible such an account of Gauguin by a non-western woman in 1934? What precisely was meant by Sher-Gil’s self-conscious placement into the body of a Tahitian nude? And how could art history have missed this painting, so deliberately a citation of art historical precedent?

SAM: Academic research often involves travel. Is there a travel experience related to your lecture experience that you could share with us?

SM: Self-Portrait as Tahitian was housed with her descendants in a private collection for a long time. I traveled to Europe to study the painting on two occasions when it was displayed as part of larger exhibitions. The first time was for the exhibition Companionable Silences curated by Shanay Jhaveri in Paris, France in 2013, and the second was for Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany in 2017.

SAM: The Seattle Art Museum is home to nearly 25,000 works of art. What’s one artwork from the museum’s collection that resonates with you? Why?

SM: I’ve always been a fan of contemporary Native American artist Wendy Red Star’s Four Seasons (2006) print series in SAM’s collection. Here, Red Star parodies and undercuts exotic stereotypes of the Indigenous woman by repeatedly stepping into the photographic frame herself. The way she challenges the conventions of looking with her own physical presence resonates a great deal with Amrita Sher-Gil’s own gesture of subversion in Self-Portrait as Tahitian, painted some ninety years ago. In both cases, the young non-white, female artist rejects the terms of her own objectification, and steps into the canvas or photographic frame to assume a new command of their situation.

SAM: Is there anything we didn’t ask that you want to share with the public in advance of your lecture?

SM: The Delhi-based contemporary artist, Vivan Sundaram (1943–2023), a major figure in Indian art who sadly passed away earlier this year, was also the nephew of Amrita Sher-Gil. A significant corpus of his work dealt with the legacy of his famous aunt. His Re-take of Amrita series of black and white digital photomontages based on archival photographs from the family archive are especially powerful. Using digital technologies, Sundaram reconfigures these photographs in highly creative ways, and recasts the family in new roles, retelling his family history.

SAM: What’s one book you’d recommend to those interested in learning more about your lecture topic?

SM: Amrita Sher-Gil: An Indian Artist Family of the Twentieth Century. Schirmer/Mosel, 2007. This catalogue—created as part of an exhibition previously held at the Tate Modern in London—includes many of Sher-Gil’s paintings alongside Sundaram’s Re-takes series.

– Simon Tran, SAM Manager of Public Engagement

Photos: Courtesy of Saloni Mathur. Self-Portrait as Tahitian, 1934, Amrita Sher-Gil. Oil on canvas. Four Seasons series: Indian Summer, 2006, printed 2016, Wendy Red Star, Archival pigment print on Sunset Fiber rag, Sheet: 23 × 26 in. (58.4 × 66 cm), Image: 21 x 24 in., Gift of Loren G. Lipson, M.D., 2016.13.4. Bourgeois Family: Mirror Frieze, Vivan Sundaram, digital photomontage of archival print, from the Re-take of Amrita series, 2001–02.

Muse/News: Art Doctor, Fall Reading, and Dürer’s Spite

Rachel Eggers on Oct 2 2023

SAM News

“Behind the scenes at SAM’s new Asian art conservation studio”: For the Seattle Times’ Pacific Northwest Magazine, Brendan Kiley takes you into SAM’s Atsuhiko and Ina Goodwin Tateuchi Conservation Center and introduces to you to Tanya Uyeda, the center’s new conservator of East Asian paintings.

“Now that SAM has its own studio and conservator—with plans to hire others, likely with Chinese or Korean expertise—it hopes to treat works not only from its own collection, but collections around the country. From here on out, Uyeda expects to be doing a lot of surgery.”

Here’s a Seattle Times reader “rave” for the Seattle Asian Art Museum’s 2020 remodel. Good news: You’ve now got one more day a week to visit our Art Deco gem; it’s now open Thursdays as well as Friday–Sunday.

Among The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel’s “Must-see Seattle-area exhibits in October” is a free book launch event. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore debuts Touching the Art at SAM on Sunday, October 15. Andrew Engelson also recommended the book in “New Local Releases to Read This Fall” in The Stranger’s fall Art and Performance Quarterly.

“No, I’m not recommending an art show where you’re allowed to touch the art. But I promise that you’ll feel like you’re up close with the paintings local writer Mattilda B. Sycamore describes in her new—and yes, touching—memoir.”

Local News

Get your fall reading list together with this Seattle Met list of Washington State Book Awards winners and finalists.

Whether you made it or missed it, relive the joy of Walk the Block at Wa Na Wari.

Vansynghel also reported on the departure of E. Michael Whittington as the executive director of the Bellevue Arts Museum. Kate Casprowiak Scher has been named interim executive director.

“Scher—who’d already been volunteering with the museum—has already jumped into the fray, connecting with staff and assuming Whittington’s responsibilities to make the transition as smooth as possible.”

Inter/National News

Farah Nayeri for the New York Times Magazine on Louvre director Laurence des Cars’s “big plans for the world’s most visited museum.”

CBS Sunday Morning shared highlights “from hip hop to Picasso” in the upcoming arts season. There’s even a mention of Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, on view through December 3 at the Seattle Asian Art Museum!

A spicy headline, via Adam Schrader for Artnet: “Albrecht Dürer Painted Himself Into a 16th-Century Altarpiece to Spite a Patron Who Paid Him Poorly, New Research Suggests.”

“It’s essentially him saying, ‘this is not actually about you as a patron, Mr. Heller. This is art and this will endure and will be looked at in 500 years’ time.’”

And Finally

“The great Seattle sitcom.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Renegade Edo and Paris: A Tale of Two Cities

Seattle Art Museum on Sep 12 2023

What do late 18th- to 19th-century Edo (present-day Tokyo) and late 19th-century Paris have in common? This was the question Xiaojin Wu, SAM’s former Curator of Japanese and Korean Art, wanted to explore when she began developing Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, her final show for SAM that can only be seen at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. She found intriguing parallels between Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints and paintings and the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901). The result is this vibrant exhibition about a shared renegade spirit that flourished in both cities’ urban and artistic cultures.

Both Edo and Paris were facing a multitude of challenges to the status quo from the rising middle classes. In Edo, townspeople pursued hedonistic lifestyles as a way of defying the state-sanctioned social hierarchy that positioned them at the bottom. That mentality contributed to a booming urban culture, which facilitated the massive production and distribution of ukiyo-e (often translated as “pictures of the floating world”). Many of these pictures arrived in France in the 1860s, a time when the French art world and its society at large were undergoing substantial changes. Fin-de-siècle Paris, like Edo before it, saw the rise of anti-establishment attitudes and a Bohemian subculture. Entertainment venues such as the iconic Moulin Rouge emerged in the Montmartre district. Meanwhile, Toulouse-Lautrec and his contemporaries searched for fresh and more expressive art forms, and they found much needed novelty in Japanese prints.

Toulouse-Lautrec was indebted to Japanese prints, in particular to those by Kitagawa Utamaro (1753–1806); he was often referred to as “Montmartre’s Utamaro.” While many are familiar with the story of Lautrec and his peers drawing inspiration from Japanese prints, this exhibition uncovers the shared subversive hedonism that underlies both Japanese and French prints. Through around ninety choice works drawn from the Seattle Art Museum’s Japanese prints collection as well as loans of Toulouse-Lautrec’s work, this exhibition offers a critical look at the renegade spirit inhabiting the graphic arts in both Edo and Paris, highlighting the social impulses—pleasure-seeking and a rising celebrity culture—behind a burgeoning art production. It is the first time the Seattle Asian Art Museum offers a double take on Japanese and French art in one exhibition—be ready to take it all in!

This article first appeared in the June through September 2023 edition of SAM Magazine and has been edited for our online readers. Become a SAM member today to receive our quarterly magazine delivered directly to your mailbox and other exclusive member perks!

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Look Beneath, Grade Nets, and Murrell’s Renaissance

Rachel Eggers on Aug 28 2023

SAM News

Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec is now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Susan Kunimatsu explores the exhibition’s themes for International Examiner.

“[Curator Xiaojin Wu] takes us on a deep dive into the sociological conditions in two emerging world capitals on opposite sides of the globe, inviting us to look beneath the visible similarities in the art.”

Foong Ping, Foster Foundation Curator of Chinese Art, shared her curator’s take on the exhibition Chronicles of a Global East with Decorative Arts Trust. Don’t miss this show, which features fascinating objects related to the Silk Roads and maritime routes of the premodern global world, now on view at the Seattle Art Museum.

And you’ve got two weeks left to see Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks at the Seattle Art Museum before its last day on Sunday, September 10.

Local News

Take a walk: David Kroman for the Seattle Times on an exciting gift of $45 million to “create a walking and biking path on the east side of Alaskan Way, a greenway that will act as a pedestrian-friendly connection between Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park to the north and the new Waterfront Park to the south.”

The Frye Art Museum announced that MariPili Tapas Bar chef Grayson Corrales will reopen their Café Frieda. The Seattle Times’ Bethany Jean Clement has the Galician-inflected details.

And Crosscut’s Brangien Davis heads to the woods with her latest ArtSEA post, finding Danish troll sculptures and a new John Grade installation of nets in the Washington Park Arboretum.

“And what if birds decide the nets make for great nests? ‘Oh,’ Grade said, ‘I would love that.’”

Inter/National News

Via Maddie Klett for ARTnews: “An Asian Imports Store, Not a Museum, Is the Site of the Summer’s Most Surprising Art Show.”

“Romance and heartbreak”: Artnet’s recurring spotlight on gallery shows features a “mixtape-inspired” show at International Center of Photography.

And Denise Murrell, curator at large at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, dreamed of an exhibition dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance and its artists’ dedication to “radical modernity”; it will open at the Met next February.

“Murrell said she hoped Harlem Renaissance would be the start of long-term partnerships between the Met and historically Black colleges and universities to help preserve and exhibit their collections on a national scale.”

And Finally

RIP Bob Barker, “the patron saint of sick days.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Provoking Prints, Artful Trash, and Untold Stories

Rachel Eggers on Aug 21 2023

SAM News

“Visually astounding, thought-provoking.” That’s Kai Curry for NW Asian Weekly reviewing Renegade Edo and Paris: Japanese Prints and Toulouse-Lautrec, now on view at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. Get over to beautiful Volunteer Park to see these stunning prints!

And Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks is on view at the Seattle Art Museum through September 10. Check out recent mentions in Seattle Medium, Crosscut, and Seattle Met.

Have you gotten your tickets to SAM Remix yet? It’s this Friday! It’s The Ticket’s top pick.

Local News

Via Paul de Barros of the Seattle Times: “Peek inside KNKX’s new Seattle home by Pike Place Market.”

The Seattle Times’ Moira Macdonald brings you scenes from Sea-Meow.

“More art, less trash”: Crosscut’s Scarlet Hansen on Seattle ReCreative and other area “creative reuse” centers.

“Seattle ReCreative operates like a thrift store for art supplies. The nonprofit receives donations from fine-art supplies to plastic straws, cutlery and beaded necklaces, all of which would otherwise end up in landfills.”

Inter/National News

Barry Schwabsky for Art in America: “Francoise Gilot Was More Than Picasso’s Muse—She Lived Life on Her Own Terms.”

Roslyn Sulcas for the New York Times on Koyo Kouoh’s rejuvenation of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (known as Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town.

Via Artnet’s Sarah Cascone: Check out the National Mall’s first outdoor public art show of sculptures. We want to see Wendy Red Star’s! (Hot tip: Her work is now on view in American Art: The Stories We Carry at SAM.

“‘The mall remains a symbol of our Democratic ideals as a nation. Beyond Granite: Pulling Together does not shy away from those aspects in our history that can be very hurtful to Americans. We must tell those untold stories fiercely,’ Charles Sams, director of National Park Service, said at the exhibition’s unveiling. ‘We are only stronger by our diversity. Without it, ecosystems collapse.’”

And Finally

“How to Support Maui Fire Victims from Seattle.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: Alborz Kamalizad.

Muse/News: Boafo’s Presence, History Digs, and Pastel Bauhaus

Rachel Eggers on Aug 7 2023

SAM News

Amoako Boafo: Soul of Black Folks, the Ghanaian artist’s debut museum solo exhibition, is now on view at the Seattle Art Museum! Evening Magazine interviewed Ramzy Lakos, SAM’s Educator for Digital Learning, about working with the artist to create a Seattle-exclusive smartphone tour for visitors that shares the artist’s perspective.

“It’s very personal, I think, to paint someone’s skin using your fingers. And it also leaves a trace of the artist on the painting itself. And I think that’s something he wants you to feel; he wants you to feel like he’s there in the gallery with you.”

And at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, don’t miss historical Japanese prints and Toulouse-Lautrec works in Renegade Edo and Paris. KUOW’s Mike Davis recommends the show in the most recent edition of his “adventures in art.” And in a recent Stranger Suggests, Charles Mudede recommended the “expertly curated” exhibition.

“This was not the stuff of the warrior class. This was the floating world of fleeting and popular pleasures: music, theater, whore houses. Also fleeting was the nightlife of Belle Époque Paris brilliantly and famously captured by the prints of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.”

Local News

“Seattle’s Museum of Museums to shut down after three years”: The Seattle Times’ Margo Vansynghel reports on the sad loss for the city’s museum community.

In her latest ArtSEA post, Brangien Davis of Crosscut shares details about “the fancy new entrance to the Colman Dock ferry terminal” debuted recently by Waterfront Seattle as part of the massive waterfront renewal project.

“Unearthing Japanese American history at a dig site in North Seattle”: The Seattle Times’ Tat Bellamy-Walker on the former site of Green Lake Garden Co. and the archaeology project to reveal its story as home to a Japanese American community before WWII-era incarceration.

“‘We’re digging up these histories, but this history is all around us,’ [archaeologist Alicia] Valentino said. “These people didn’t just disappear. They’re in the community today.’”

Inter/National News

In another archaeology story, Hadami Ditmars reports for the Art Newspaper on the discovery of a “1,000-year-old fish trap and the remains of the ancestral village of ȾEL¸IȽĆE (pronounced Tel-eech).”

Melena Ryzik for the New York Times on the new Louis Armstrong Center, which joins the Louis Armstrong House Museum in Queens for even more ways to celebrate the famed jazz trumpeter, singer, and bandleader.

“It Was Like Pastel Bauhaus”: Artnet speaks with artists Gary Panter and Wayne White about working with the late Pee-wee Herman to bring “Pee-wee’s Playhouse” to life.

“Paul [Reubens], Ric, and Wayne, we’re all painters,’ Panter said. ‘We really brought the sensibility of art and art history to the set. Paul was more of a conceptual artist. He had a lot of input, and we had endless ideas.’”

And Finally

“Meet the diplomat in Seattle who’s become a social media star by folding origami cranes.”

– Rachel Eggers, SAM Associate Director of Public Relations

Photo: L. Fried.