Re-Collection Vol. 2

Rhapsody in Color

July 27 - December 15, 2013

Hours:
9:30-17:00 (last admission 16:30)
Closed:
Mondays (except national holidays, then closed next non-holiday)
Organizer:
DIC Corporation
Patrons:
Chiba Prefecture, Chiba Prefectural Board of Education, Sakura City, Sakura City Board of Education

Museum Admission

  • Adults ¥900
  • College / 65 and over ¥700
  • Elem / JH / HS ¥500

Groups of 20 or more:

  • Adults ¥800
  • College / 65 and over ¥600
  • Elem / JH / HS ¥400

Persons with a disability pass:

  • Adults ¥700
  • College / 65 and over ¥500
  • Elem / JH / HS ¥300

*Admission also includes entrance to the permanent collection galleries.
- For students and seniors over 65, discounts require identification such as a Student ID, passport or driver's license.
- For persons with a disability pass=the same discounted price applies for one accompanying care-giver for each disability pass holder

Outline

For the second phase of our Re-collection exhibition series that divides the year into periods during which works from the Kawamura Museum collection will be exhibited throughout the museum galleries, we will simultaneously mount three themed exhibitions consisting of works that we have seldom had the opportunity to show publicly. We hope that visitors will enjoy this lineup of works that can only be viewed in the Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art and the unique flow of time they create in the galleries, at the same time we hope you will enjoy the changing seasonal delights in the museum gardens and nature trail.

Frank Stella Room

This exhibition brings together 16 large works by one of the Kawamura Museum’s representative artists of American contemporary art, Frank Stella.  While studying art history at Princeton University, Frank Stella (1936 - ) also studied painting under William C. Seitz and others, and eventually he decided to make painting his career. As he painted initially under the influence of Abstract Expressionist artists such as Mark Rothko and William Gottlieb, Stella frequented the museums and galleries of New York and began to search for his own style of painting. It was at this time that he first saw the flag and target paintings of Jasper Jones at the Leo Castelli Gallery and sensed a new direction for art that prompted him to quit his former style of painting and begin a new series of works using a minimum of color and geometric compositions that came to be titled his “Black Series”. Some of these works were selected for curator Dorothy Miller’s exhibition “Sixteen Americans” (1959) at New York’s Museum of Modern Art when Stella was just 23, which would send shock waves through the American art scene.

After that, Stella was drawn to the possibilities of “painting as object” and began to create irregularly shaped canvases as “supports” for painting in a unique approach that led to a series richly colored geometric compositions on shaped canvases. From there, his art would take yet another bold new direction as he sought to completely separate the composition from the ground (support) by creating large-scale relief constructions make of metal. At this stage in his career, Stella became recognized as one of the world’s representative contemporary artists and his works were collected by many art museums and exhibitions of his work organized in countries around the world. Now, at the age of 77, he is creating yet another type of work incorporating architectural elements.

The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art’s Stella collection is widely recognized as one of the world’s foremost, characterized by its breadth in spanning approximately 35 years of Stella’s artistic development, from a representative work of Stella’s early “Black Series” titled Tomlinson Court Park (2nd version) (1959) to the large free-standing work Sequoia (1991) that can be considered a fully 3-dimensional work of sculpture.

From the Proverbs by Erich Brauer

Erich Brauer (1929 - ) is known as one of the prominent artists of the Vienna Fantasy school. His work From the Proverbs of Solomon (1971) is a series of twelve prints based on selected sections of the Book of Proverbs of the Bible’s Old Testament. Brauer took these passages from the Book of Proverbs with their teachings about human wrongdoings and portrayed them in strangely magical scenes that straddle the border between reality and fantasy. In this exhibit, the 12 prints of the From the Proverbs of Solomon from the Kawamura collection are shown in the galleries for the first time, along with three other works.

In the images of the prints of the From the Proverbs of Solomon series are things that look like amoeba or jellyfish floating around and interacting with the bodies of the human figures. Their colors have a richness like ripened fruit and a brightness like phosphorescence that gives them the appearance of living organisms in constant motion. These depictions seem to bring to the surface the insecurity or nightmares that lie deep within the human psyche, but at the same time Brauer’s compositions draw us into extraordinary worlds beyond the bounds of reality. His pictures a filled with silence, but within the depths of these dreamlike world woven with a mix of violent and grotesque images, near-futuristic vision, fantasy and humor, we sense an underlying reverberation of the echoing words The Proverbs. 

Around the time Brauer began his artistic career, he traveled through North Africa and Israel, sometimes earning his stay by performing music and dance. Not limiting himself to the European painting tradition, Brauer also adopted techniques of Indian and Persian miniature paintings. The rich appeal of Brauer’s art can be seen as a blend of the cultural roots of the Jewish family he was born and raised in, the environment of the artistic capital of Vienna where he lived and worked, the customs and culture he absorbed while living in the numerous lands his travels took him to and his exceptional imagination.



Erich Brauer (Arik Brauer) Profile

Erich Brauer was born in Vienna, Austria on January 4, 1929, the son of a Jewish immigrant father from Lithuania who was a shoemaker by profession. As a child he experienced the persecution and forced labor inflicted on the Jews by the Nazi regime. In 1945 he was accepted into the Vienna Art Academy and the next year he began studying painting under Albert Paris Gütersloh (1946-51). During this period (1949-53) Brauer also studied as a vocalist at the Vienna Conservatory. During the 1950s he traveled around France, Spain, North Africa, Greece and Israel, and while staying in each city he earned his keep performing as a vocalist and dancer. In 1955, he married a Jewish woman named Neomi Dahabany and was blessed with three daughters, Timna, Talija and Ruth. At the time of his marriage, Brauer changed his given name from the German name (Erich) to the Hebrew name Arik, meaning “Lion of God.” In 1956, he held his first solo exhibition of paintings in Vienna. From the 1960s Brauer devoted himself to painting as a full-fledged career, after which he was active as an artist from bases in Paris, Vienna and Israel. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s, his works were displayed and promoted by galleries around Europe and America. In 1965 his work was exhibited at the Sao Paulo Biennale. In 1974, a large exhibition of Brauer’s prints was held at the Albertina in Vienna, which later toured European cities. In 1979 a retrospective of Brauer’s work was held at the The Jewish Museum in New York. Since the 1980s, exhibitions at the Secession exhibition hall in Vienna and other museums in Austria and abroad have cemented his reputation as an artist, and numerous books about Brauer and his art have been written by the artist himself and researchers of his art and career. As a musician as well, Brauer has released several albums, and his work as an artist and musician has continued to this day in the 21st century.

In Time with Painting

To interact meaningfully with a painting of witty complexity, do we need to have a particular knowledge of art? It is true that certain knowledge will make that interaction with the contents of the painting go more smoothly, but it is not absolutely necessary for enjoying a conversation with the painting in front of you. Some people find pleasure in looking at paintings in rather simple ways. The roughly 60 paintings of the exhibit “In Time with Painting” have been selected for the presence of a common element of “line” as a key for enjoying the paintings more than you might otherwise. A slight change in the way we look at a painting can lead us to the joy of finding the humorous aspect of a painting that looked difficult to understand initially, or finding a unique aspect in a painting that may have looked boring at first, and finding a new aspect of a painting that you thought you were well familiar with. Join us in this chance to get “in time with painting.”

Events

Floor Lecture

Aug. 10 (Sat.) 15:00-16:30
Lecturer: Haruki Yaegashi (art historian, former head of the curatorial dept. of National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo) 
While viewing the paintings on exhibit, Mr. Yaegashi will talk about their historical background and the artists.


Gallery Talk by the exhibition Curators

Aug. 3 (Sat.), Sep. 7 (Sat.), Oct. 5 (Sat.), Oct. 26 (Sat.), Nov. 16 (Sat.)
14:00-15:30
The curators in charge of each of the three exhibits will explain the contents. 


Guided Tours

Daily 14:00-15:00 (except days of the Floor Lecture, Gallery Talks) 
Tours of the permanent collection and the 5 Rooms exhibition by guide staff. 


Workshops

Fun with Art in Summer Vacation
Aug. 11 (San.), Aug. 17 (Sat.), Aug. 18 (San.)
Workshops are planned on making a treasure box kaleidoscope, experience making candy art and composing and performing music, etc. (Reservations required) 


Museum Concert

Pak Kyuhee guitar recital “The tremolo of angels” Touching the Heart” 
Sep. 21 (Sat.) 18:00-