First Phillips Exhibitions for Johns and Gormley Highlight Works on Paper
Washington, D.C.—This summer, The Phillips Collection presents an outstanding selection of works on paper by two of the most critically acclaimed artists working today, Jasper Johns and Antony Gormley. Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme, the first exhibition of Johns’s work at the Phillips, traces the celebrated American artist’s investigations in printmaking with 90 iconic works created from 1960 to today. Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is the first major U.S. exhibition of drawings by the British artist best known for sculpture, installation, and public projects. Both exhibitions are on view at the Phillips, June 2 through Sept. 9, 2012.
JASPER JOHNS: VARIATIONS ON A THEME
One of the foremost printmakers of the modern era, Jasper Johns revolutionized the field with innovations in lithography, intaglio, silkscreen, and lead relief. For more than five decades, he has tested the medium’s boundaries, reinventing the same subjects in endless variations. This exhibition features these groundbreaking examples—targets, American flags, numbers, and other subjects, including newer motifs like hand gestures from American Sign Language.
“Jasper Johns’s persistent experimentation not only transformed printmaking but set the standard for contemporary art,” says Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski. “A champion of visionary American artists since 1921, the Phillips is proud to present over five decades of Johns’s graphic achievements, including our own The Critic Sees (1967). We are deeply grateful to the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation whose collaboration makes a project on this scale possible.”
The exhibition spans Johns’s entire printmaking career, beginning with his first experiments and culminating in 2011. In 1960, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) founding director Tatyana Grosman encouraged Johns to work on lithographic stones, and he completed five prints and began his celebrated 0-9 series. Inspired, Johns saw printmaking as a vehicle to transform ideas already developed in painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Johns’s collaborations with master printers, including those at ULAE in New York and Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, were essential to his work. They empowered him to test methods unprecedented in the history of the medium. He said: “It’s the printmaking techniques that interest me . . . the technical innovation possible.” Six ingenious lead relief prints realized at Gemini G.E.L. from 1969 to 1970 are featured in the exhibition.
Johns mines art history, including his own work, to repeat and vary motifs. Fragments-According to What (1971) excavates six details from his 1964 painting, According to What. The exhibition brings together all six prints from this important series. In 1976, Johns partnered with writer Samuel Beckett on the book Foirades/Fizzles. Its 33 etchings by Johns and five text fragments by Beckett are on view with other significant works, including the 1st Etchings portfolio (1968), Corpse and Mirror (1976), The Seasons (1980s), Green Angel (1990s), and his most recent Shrinky Dink series (2011), layered with imagery from letters to fragmented cubist forms.
Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme is organized by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
A central figure in modern and contemporary art, Jasper Johns’s work is represented in nearly every major museum collection and has been the subject of one-person exhibitions throughout the world. Born in Georgia in 1930 and raised in South Carolina, Johns grew up wanting to be an artist. He moved to New York City in his 20s and emerged as a force in the American art scene in 1958 with a solo show at Leo Castelli Gallery from which the Museum of Modern Art purchased three pieces. For 50 years Johns has challenged the possibilities of printmaking, painting, and sculpture, laying the groundwork for a wide range of experimental artists. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1988 and was awarded the Grand Prix. President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Johns currently lives and works in Sharon, Conn., and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.
ANTONY GORMLEY: DRAWING SPACE
Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is the first major U.S. exhibition of drawings by the critically acclaimed British artist, following the recent presentation of his drawings at the Museo d’Arte Contemporane Roma (MACRO) in 2010, as well as the British Museum, London, in 2002. Known for sculpture, installation, and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the body to space, Gormley is also an exquisite draftsman. The exhibition introduces a wide array of works on paper that span the artist’s nearly-40-year career with a selection of recent sculpture, emphasizing the intrinsic link between the two media.
“The Phillips is thrilled to introduce Antony Gormley to American audiences as a graphic artist and examine closely the evolution of his process,” says Dorothy Kosinski. “His work pushes us to consider art’s central role in the human experience, a value shared by our founder Duncan Phillips who believed in art’s power to transform the world.”
Drawing has always been a core part of Gormley’s practice. Often made at night, these works are spontaneous, direct, and exploit unusual materials such as burnt chicory, prickly pear cactus juice, earth, casein, and copper sulphate. They investigate the human form and its connection to natural and architectural surroundings. Although he usually uses his own body as the subject for his work, Gormley addresses collective experience and memory. Early on, Gormley used drawing to develop ideas for his sculpture, but these works have evolved to show a range and intensity beyond the purpose of studies. His recent drawings are as direct as any yet made; high-energy scratches on pigment-soaked paper, which activate the viewer’s space.
Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is organized by The Phillips Collection.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. He studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge (1968-71), and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka (1971-4), experiences that profoundly inform his art. Gormley’s work has been exhibited at premier museums in England, Demark, Sweden, Germany, China, Mexico, and Russia. His major public works include Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, Liverpool), Event Horizon (New York), Habitat (Anchorage), and Exposure (Lelystad, Netherlands). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, a South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, and the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007. He was made an Officer of the British Empire in 1997 and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Trinity College, and Jesus College, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007.
ABOUT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
The Phillips Collection is one of the world’s most distinguished collections of impressionist and modern American and European art. Stressing the continuity between art of the past and present, it offers a strikingly original and experimental approach to modern art by combining works of different nationalities and periods in displays that change frequently. The setting is similarly unconventional, featuring small rooms, a domestic scale, and a personal atmosphere. Artists represented in the collection include Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Honoré Daumier, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Diebenkorn, among others. The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, has an active collecting program and regularly organizes acclaimed special exhibitions, many of which travel internationally. The Intersections series features projects by contemporary artists, responding to art and spaces in the museum. The Phillips also produces award-winning education programs for K-12 teachers and students, as well as for adults. The museum’s Center for the Study of Modern Art explores new ways of thinking about art and the nature of creativity, through artist visits and lectures, and provides a forum for scholars through courses, postdoctoral fellowships, and internships. Since 1941, the museum has hosted Sunday Concerts in its wood-paneled Music Room. The Phillips Collection is a private, non-government museum, supported primarily by donations.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The Phillips Collection is located in the heart of Washington’s historic Dupont Circle neighborhood, at 1600 21st Street, NW, near the Dupont Circle Metro (Q Street exit). Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays until 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day.
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JASPER JOHNS: VARIATIONS ON A THEME
One of the foremost printmakers of the modern era, Jasper Johns revolutionized the field with innovations in lithography, intaglio, silkscreen, and lead relief. For more than five decades, he has tested the medium’s boundaries, reinventing the same subjects in endless variations. This exhibition features these groundbreaking examples—targets, American flags, numbers, and other subjects, including newer motifs like hand gestures from American Sign Language.
“Jasper Johns’s persistent experimentation not only transformed printmaking but set the standard for contemporary art,” says Phillips Director Dorothy Kosinski. “A champion of visionary American artists since 1921, the Phillips is proud to present over five decades of Johns’s graphic achievements, including our own The Critic Sees (1967). We are deeply grateful to the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation whose collaboration makes a project on this scale possible.”
The exhibition spans Johns’s entire printmaking career, beginning with his first experiments and culminating in 2011. In 1960, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE) founding director Tatyana Grosman encouraged Johns to work on lithographic stones, and he completed five prints and began his celebrated 0-9 series. Inspired, Johns saw printmaking as a vehicle to transform ideas already developed in painting, drawing, and sculpture.
Johns’s collaborations with master printers, including those at ULAE in New York and Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, were essential to his work. They empowered him to test methods unprecedented in the history of the medium. He said: “It’s the printmaking techniques that interest me . . . the technical innovation possible.” Six ingenious lead relief prints realized at Gemini G.E.L. from 1969 to 1970 are featured in the exhibition.
Johns mines art history, including his own work, to repeat and vary motifs. Fragments-According to What (1971) excavates six details from his 1964 painting, According to What. The exhibition brings together all six prints from this important series. In 1976, Johns partnered with writer Samuel Beckett on the book Foirades/Fizzles. Its 33 etchings by Johns and five text fragments by Beckett are on view with other significant works, including the 1st Etchings portfolio (1968), Corpse and Mirror (1976), The Seasons (1980s), Green Angel (1990s), and his most recent Shrinky Dink series (2011), layered with imagery from letters to fragmented cubist forms.
Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme is organized by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the John and Maxine Belger Family Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
A central figure in modern and contemporary art, Jasper Johns’s work is represented in nearly every major museum collection and has been the subject of one-person exhibitions throughout the world. Born in Georgia in 1930 and raised in South Carolina, Johns grew up wanting to be an artist. He moved to New York City in his 20s and emerged as a force in the American art scene in 1958 with a solo show at Leo Castelli Gallery from which the Museum of Modern Art purchased three pieces. For 50 years Johns has challenged the possibilities of printmaking, painting, and sculpture, laying the groundwork for a wide range of experimental artists. He represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1988 and was awarded the Grand Prix. President Barack Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Johns currently lives and works in Sharon, Conn., and the Caribbean island of Saint Martin.
ANTONY GORMLEY: DRAWING SPACE
Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is the first major U.S. exhibition of drawings by the critically acclaimed British artist, following the recent presentation of his drawings at the Museo d’Arte Contemporane Roma (MACRO) in 2010, as well as the British Museum, London, in 2002. Known for sculpture, installation, and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the body to space, Gormley is also an exquisite draftsman. The exhibition introduces a wide array of works on paper that span the artist’s nearly-40-year career with a selection of recent sculpture, emphasizing the intrinsic link between the two media.
“The Phillips is thrilled to introduce Antony Gormley to American audiences as a graphic artist and examine closely the evolution of his process,” says Dorothy Kosinski. “His work pushes us to consider art’s central role in the human experience, a value shared by our founder Duncan Phillips who believed in art’s power to transform the world.”
Drawing has always been a core part of Gormley’s practice. Often made at night, these works are spontaneous, direct, and exploit unusual materials such as burnt chicory, prickly pear cactus juice, earth, casein, and copper sulphate. They investigate the human form and its connection to natural and architectural surroundings. Although he usually uses his own body as the subject for his work, Gormley addresses collective experience and memory. Early on, Gormley used drawing to develop ideas for his sculpture, but these works have evolved to show a range and intensity beyond the purpose of studies. His recent drawings are as direct as any yet made; high-energy scratches on pigment-soaked paper, which activate the viewer’s space.
Antony Gormley: Drawing Space is organized by The Phillips Collection.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. He studied archaeology, anthropology, and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge (1968-71), and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka (1971-4), experiences that profoundly inform his art. Gormley’s work has been exhibited at premier museums in England, Demark, Sweden, Germany, China, Mexico, and Russia. His major public works include Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, Liverpool), Event Horizon (New York), Habitat (Anchorage), and Exposure (Lelystad, Netherlands). Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, a South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, and the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007. He was made an Officer of the British Empire in 1997 and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Trinity College, and Jesus College, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007.
ABOUT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
The Phillips Collection is one of the world’s most distinguished collections of impressionist and modern American and European art. Stressing the continuity between art of the past and present, it offers a strikingly original and experimental approach to modern art by combining works of different nationalities and periods in displays that change frequently. The setting is similarly unconventional, featuring small rooms, a domestic scale, and a personal atmosphere. Artists represented in the collection include Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Honoré Daumier, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Diebenkorn, among others. The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, has an active collecting program and regularly organizes acclaimed special exhibitions, many of which travel internationally. The Intersections series features projects by contemporary artists, responding to art and spaces in the museum. The Phillips also produces award-winning education programs for K-12 teachers and students, as well as for adults. The museum’s Center for the Study of Modern Art explores new ways of thinking about art and the nature of creativity, through artist visits and lectures, and provides a forum for scholars through courses, postdoctoral fellowships, and internships. Since 1941, the museum has hosted Sunday Concerts in its wood-paneled Music Room. The Phillips Collection is a private, non-government museum, supported primarily by donations.
VISITOR INFORMATION
The Phillips Collection is located in the heart of Washington’s historic Dupont Circle neighborhood, at 1600 21st Street, NW, near the Dupont Circle Metro (Q Street exit). Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays until 8:30 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Closed Mondays and New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day.
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