Archive for February, 2010
Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Mt. Airy stained glass maker one of nation’s best
 Charles Z. Lawrence points to his studio copy of “The Raising of Lazarus,” one of five windows he made for the National Cathedral in Washington. The original contains an unusual ingredient (see story). (Photo by Richard S. Lee) After a Depression-affected childhood in Newton, New Jersey (“about as far up into New Jersey as you can get”), Mt. Airy’s Charles Z. Lawrence, one of the country’s most gifted stained glass makers, worked at several non-career jobs after high school. These even included a brief stint at the Brooklyn girdle factory that employed his mother. In an essay he wrote for The Stained Glass Quarterly magazine, Charles, now 74, described his introduction to the world of stained glass this way:
“I started to become interested in painting … In my senior year of high school, the school had an art show in a park … I sold all my watercolors. I made $15. I was hooked; I was going to become an artist if it killed me.
“[The German master craftsman and World War II refugee] Rudolf H. Buenz saw some of my paintings and offered me an apprenticeship. So in 1960 when I left the North Jersey woods, I left as a journeyman-craftsman to spend the next four years in New York City and to work at the [stained glass] craft while continuing my studies as a fine arts student.” (He studied at the Pratt School of Design in Brooklyn.)
The apprenticeship stretched to seven years, while Lawrence learned every part of the ancient art of stained glass. He said, “I’m just about the last of the traditional stained glass apprentices — and one day, I’ll write a book about it.” Even now, 50 years later, he still calls Rudolf Buenz “Maestro.”
Lawrence attributes his “chameleon” stained glass style — any treatment, from Medieval to abstract — to his extensive training with different glass designers and his work in several studios. He, his wife, Jonelle Shilito, and baby daughter lived in Greenwich Village during the mid-’60s.
As such things have a way of happening, Lawrence’s New York-based work dried up in 1966. The promise of a job with Willet Studios, then in Chestnut Hill, brought the Lawrences to Philadelphia. After renting a house for a year, Charles bought the vintage property on Allens Lane where he still lives. It is both a charming residence and a complete stained glass studio with adjoining workroom. Much of the house’s glass has been replaced with Lawrence designs — a constant pleasure to its creator and to anyone visiting this attractive home.
 Created by West Mt. Airy resident Charles Z. Lawrence is this stunning Reformation window in the west clerestory of the south transept, National Cathedral, Mount St. Alban in Washington, D.C. Lawrence worked as Willet’s designer from 1967 until 1982, when he opened the C.Z. Lawrence Stained Glass Studios, although “I still design for Willet.” (The company has moved from Chestnut Hill to the Juniata section of the city.) Since going entirely freelance in 1982, Lawrence has done it all: concept, design, glass specifying and cutting, painting, puttying, assembly and installation. He hires helpers as needed, and a daughter, Tracy Bailey, is a frequent co-worker.
A stained glass craftsman is, of course, defined by his body of work, and Lawrence’s work is as varied as it is prestigious. His stained glass windows impart beauty to religious and secular buildings alike. One assignment — of towering height — was the 43-foot-tall commission for the Washington (DC) Temple of Latter Day Saints. (“You know, the one that looks like the Emerald City in a different color as you drive toward it on the Washington Beltway.”) He even has a copy of the Book of Mormon inscribed with thanks for the beauty of the windows.
“My best paintings are the five windows I designed for the National Cathedral in Washington,” he replied when asked to name a favorite commission. As for an unusual assignment, he named “The 10,000 times magnification of the molecule that makes Gore-Tex [fabric] work,” the window he designed for the fabric manufacturer’s Cherry Hill, MD headquarters.
Charles Z. Lawrence is as masterful a storyteller as he is a craftsman. To appreciate two such tales, you should understand that stained glass is assembled with lead channels separating the individual pieces of glass. This sealant should stay pliable; if it performs as it should, the stained glass window will flex noticeably under windy conditions but will resist blowing out of its frame; the sealant cushions the glass throughout the window’s lifetime.
In the winter of 1956 and 1957, Charles was part of the team installing 15 large windows in St. Henry’s Roman Catholic Church near Nashville. “Don’t ever think the South doesn’t get cold!” he said of this adventure. “One day [as we were installing], the wind blew so hard the boss on the job tied down his little Porsche to keep it from blowing over. One window was flexing as we put it in place — rippling, almost — but it didn’t break. That was more than 50 years ago. Those windows are still there.”
Charles Lawrence lives with his wonderful dog, Buddah, a refugee from the mean streets. “I cleaned the living room to prepare for this interview,” he said. “I even cleaned my dog’s teeth for you.” And this led him to another story.
In years past, Lawrence also had a dog, Angus, a beloved black Labrador. Dog and master were inseparable, going for walks in Fairmount Park at workday’s end, and even out for occasional beers. When Angus died, a saddened Lawrence had him cremated but did not bury the ashes. At the time, he was also facing what every creative person must from time to time: a supposedly completed job needing revision. (We know!)
In this case, it was for the Raising of Lazarus window at the National Cathedral. Out it came, and back to Charles’ Mt. Airy workshop for the re-do. Away went the rejected glass segments; in went the new. But not without re-puttying. In his 1991 Stained Glass Quarterly essay, Lawrence wrote: “There was one last thing to do, puttying. I don’t bother much with either making or applying the putty, but this time was special … I wanted one more thing for the putty. I found it! The last thing that went into that window was a handful of Angus’ ashes [in the putty], and then the window went back to the National Cathedral. The window was accepted … with acclaim.
“The Cathedral is done, and Angus is in a safe place for the coming millennium, and after that we will be together again.”
To reach CZ Lawrence Stained Glass, call 215-247-3985 or e-mail czlg@earthlink.net. To view his work online, Google his name.
By Richard S. and Missy Lee
Source: The Chestnut Hill Local
Tags: arThou, arTist, Charles Lawrence, fine arTs, glass arT, New Jersey arT, NJ arTist, paintings, religious arT, stained glass
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Thursday, February 18th, 2010
Stefan Strumbel is an artist from Germany, whose creations are well known national-wide. He combines a strong details in his works, coming up with items that make a statements. Most of the elements used are German images with great meaning for the citizens. His style was also connected to pop art, a current which challenges tradition and emphasizes mass production. Here is a better interpretation of Stefan’s work from Wicked Halo: “Although his work includes cultural artifacts such as cuckoo clocks or the traditional costume of the Black Forest, he isolates and recontextualises using everyday objects such as tree-shaped air fresheners and shopping carts and giving pieces of his work titles such as “What the fuck is Heimat”? Heimat is a quintessentially German concept, which roughly means homeland. “There is no English word for Heimat,” Strumbel explains. “Some people link Heimat to a place, for others it is a feeling.”
Source: FreshHome
Tags: arT, arThou, cuckoo clocks, German arT, Heimat, pop arT, Stefan Strumbel, street arT, unusual arT
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Thursday, February 18th, 2010
 Ants Invade Colombian Congress in Unique Art Display Hundreds of large black- and brown-colored fiberglass ants covered the facade, columns and windows of the Colombian Congress building in an unusual sculpture by artist Rafael Gomezbarros, who told Efe that the work symbolizes human migration.
With his work depicting an invasion of the ants, which “represent immigration, globalization and displacement, I’m trying to force a reflection on what we experience and see on a daily basis, and also to raise awareness about our monuments,” Gomezbarros said.
A total of 1,300 ants, each measuring 95 centimeters (just over three feet) in length, were mounted on the facade of the legislative headquarters.
Gomezbarros made the figures using a special resin and fiberglass and has dubbed his creation “Casatomada” (House Occupied).
The sculptor explained that the work is not political in nature, since the exhibit “does not go beyond artistic expression, and in a sense is more social than political because it seeks to call attention to monuments.”
The unique work will be mounted at the Congress building through March 26 and then two days later will be installed at the Los Heroes (Heroes) monument, located at a major intersection on the north side of the Colombian capital.
The 37-year-old Gomezbarros, who studied plastic arts in Bogota, said that in June “Casatomada” will be taken out of the country and be exhibited in Argentina, Mexico, Chile, the United States, Canada, Spain and Germany.
The sculptor told Efe that one of his dreams is for his work to “invade” Madrid’s Puerta de Alcala and other monuments in the Spanish capital.
He added, however, that before he can export his creation he will need to find one or more international firms to help him transport the fiberglass insects and display them at monuments in different parts of the world.
Source: Latin American Herald Tribune
Tags: ant arT, arT form, arThou, Casatomada, Colombian Congress, fiberglass ants, Rafael Gomezbarros, sculptor, sculpture, unusual arT, unusual sculpture
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
 Lemonade IN THE REALM of dance music with an electronic bent, a dexterous band that can channel the genre’s energy and aural acrobatics with live instrumentation has a rare gift. Lemonade, a Brooklyn-based trio, accomplishes this by melding an ever-shifting array of tropical beats and rave sensibilities with punk tactics into a smooth sound that’s packed clubs on both coasts.
Though Callan Clendenin, Alex Pasternak and Ben Steidel met in high school playing in scream-y San Francisco punk bands, they eventually transferred their efforts from the political angst of punk to complex musical experiments, uniting under the influences of Liquid Liquid’s post-disco, A Certain Ratio’s punk-funk and a load of dub reggae.
“Ben was the only other guy we knew who… was into dance music, and knew more about it than Alex and I did, and also knew experimental noise,” says singer Clendenin at the Williamsburg loft apartment that doubles as Pasternak’s home and Lemonade’s production studio. “That was what we were listening to simultaneously. He was literally the only other person in the Bay Area that was a musician that had those exact tastes at the exact same time. So it was fateful, I suppose.”
When the trio formed in 2005, the Bay Area was filled with harsh, moody No Wavecentric guitar bands, Clendenin explains, and Lemonade’s “rave-y elements” were not in line with that aesthetic.
“The total enemy of the punk scene and the hip sort of art scene was a rave or techno sound, especially in San Francisco,” he adds. “That was by far, at the time, the most taboo sound to use.”
But Lemonade’s ecstatic fusion of samples, tweaked synth noises, heavy bass and throbbing beats transcended boundaries, and soon the three were performing at events across the underground music scene, from world music nights to hipster dance parties to techno warehouse throwdowns.
Three successful years into what Steidel (Lemonade’s bassist) describes as an attempt to incorporate dance music into San Francisco’s noise scene, the group packed up and moved to New York. Lemonade released its exuberant self-titled debut last summer, and a slew of accolades, as well as remixes from Delorean and C.L.A.W.S., among others, ensued.
But while the record’s rapid-fire beats sound perfectly suited to a club, its follow-up, the forthcoming Pure Moods EP (due out Mar. 9), comes off like a rowdy street carnival, its tropical polyrhythms defining what Lemonade calls its “Caribbean record.” Cheekily named after the series of ambient, world music-influenced “New Age” compilations released in the 1990s with tracks from Deep Forest and The Orb (both of which Lemonade readily admits are influences), the EP begins with “Banana Republic,” a bouncy, steel drum-punctuated anthem about living in a loft (much like Lemonade’s production studio) whose main portal to the outside world is a skylight.The first single from the EP, “Lifted,” follows, and it too is peppered with sweet steel drums intermingled with a sample of a girl’s echoing laughter and Clendenin’s warm, at times breathy, croon. The only steel drum-less song on the new EP, “Underwater Sonics,” includes drum and bass elements and tinges of chiptune (Clendenin references Sonic the Hedgehog as an inspiration for the track). Inspired by everything from Soca to R&B to Balearic beat, Lemonade defies easy categorization, which suits the band just fine, even though it means Lemonade has few comrades in its style of cross-pollination.
“We’re creating from so many different influences… it’s really hard to fit into some scene,” says Pasternak, the band’s percussionist. “People don’t recognize a lot of the places we’re getting our ideas from.”
Though they reference their compatriots in Tanlines and These Are Powers, two Brooklyn bands with post-punk tendencies and constantly morphing approaches to dance music, as sharing some of their musical interests, ultimately, the three prefer the open-endedness of a singular vision that they can reconfigure as the mood strikes them.
“Every time there’s any sort of scene that might make sense to be a part of, we kind of push.We don’t push the scene away, we just push away from that, because our influences keep changing,” Clendenin says. “We’re still doing exactly what we want, which just so happens to be not what people would expect from us.”
> Lemonade
Feb. 18, Glasslands, 289 Kent Ave. (at S. 2nd St.), Brooklyn, 718-599-1450; 9, $10.
Source: New York Press
Tags: Alex Pasternak, arT event, arT scene, arThou, Bay Area musicians, Ben Steidel, California arTists, Callan Clendenin, dance music, experimental music, Lemonade, New York band, NY music, punk, rave, San Francisco arTists, SF band, techno sound
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
 Mr. Brainwash's designed a record cover for Madonna's greatest hits album last year. French artist and filmmaker Thierry Guetta has developed a devoted street art following under the name Mr. Brainwash. But is he serious?
“I’m like a machine, I create and create and create,” Guetta explains, standing in the center of the Meatpacking District event space he rented for a new exhibition of his art made under his unsettlingly blunt moniker. The show was set to open in a few days. Paint was splattered across his pants; canvases, many wrapped in plastic, sat around him, waiting to be hung on the walls; and at least a dozen assistants, many smoking cigarettes, scurried about, finishing pieces.
“It has been two years since my last show because when I do a show, I really do a show,” said Guetta, who looks like a scruffier, skinnier John Belushi, as he walked us through the cavernous space. He’s also been busy, designing an album cover for Madonna’s Celebration release last year (which features the singer in a paint-splattered portrait that is an unapologetic copy of Andy Warhol’s iconic Marilyn Monroe work), following street artist Bansky for the unusual street-art documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop, and periodically stenciling his own pieces around Los Angeles. His origins are largely unknown. Some have speculated that in fact he is the street artist Banksy, who masks his identity even throughout the documentary, while others say he comes from a wealthy French family. (He and his representatives, on the other hand, maintain that he “mortgaged his home” and sold his belongings to pay for the current exhibition.)
 Mr. Brainwash, Yves Saint Laurent, 2010 “The definition of art is: no limits,’” Guetta said proudly as he showed the dozens of square, silkscreen portraits he has had printed with the faces of celebrities. There was a series of fashion designers printed in silver and another series of technology entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg printed in gold. “That’s the guy who founded Twitter!” said Guetta, excitedly singling out one of the works. As we walked around, a man followed us with a video camera, recording the entire interview.
The exhibition spills across the two floors of the warehouse-like gallery. One whole wall is devoted to prints of Kate Moss, which have been splashed lightly with neon paint. They are near-identical copies of Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, but Guetta acts offended at that suggestion. “Andy Warhol didn’t do a portrait of Kate Moss!” he said. “If I wait until Andy Warhol does it, I’m never going to see it. Just because Andy Warhol painted portraits, does that mean I can’t do it?”
There are also huge mock spray cans, some as big as ten feet tall, scattered about, bearing labels for Hershey’s chocolate, Pepto-Bismol, and Campbell’s Soup. “These things bring you memories,” he said of the brands. “They touch your heart.” Elsewhere, a taxi cab was parked inside gigantic plastic toy packaging, like a Matchbox car. Other work in the show was even more remorselessly banal. There was a portrait of Benjamin Franklin wearing large headphones and a vest emblazoned with Louis Vuitton buttons — “I just try to be kind of funny, with no limits,” Guetta said — and a portrait of the band Kiss made out of broken shards of vinyl records. Guetta does not hide the fact that most of his work is fabricated by his assistants, with his role limited to occasionally doing quality-control touchups, for instance adding an extra bit of vinyl for a Kiss member’s eye. However, he declines to go into detail about his operation. “I don’t want to explain it,” Guetta says. “It’s like cooking. If you go to a famous chef, he might let you taste his famous sauce, but he will not tell you how he made it.”
The artist motioned to a large, wooden paint can, perhaps ten feet in diameter. “When I build installations, why do I do it?” he asked. “It’s not going to make me money.” Is it for sale? “It’s not for sale, but if someone wants to buy it, why not?” Asked to pick his favorite piece in the show, Guetta demurred. “Each one is my favorite when I’m working on it,” he said, before finally settling on a larger portrait of Charlie Chaplin, emblazoned with a pink heart. “I want positivity in everything I do,” he said. He noted that his proudest work was an earlier painting that featured Einstein holding a sign that read “Love is the answer.” Says Guetta: “I think that was a big statement for me.”
Much of Guetta’s work is so unredeemably shallow that it has led some to suggest that the Mr. Brainwash persona is part of an elaborate performance art project, a cynical conceptual experiment to see if, with the right friends (Shepard Fairey has provided a guarded endorsement: “Not all the work was magnificent, but it improved steadily…”) and the right marketing (the Brainwash show is being promoted by Nadine Johnson Inc., one of New York’s most formidable public relations companies) it is possible to sell anything.
At the packed opening a few days later, with a crowd that was more fashion than art-heavy (and which featured a bevy of strikingly tall, afro-bewigged models dispensing vodka drinks), that question seemed to have been answered. Red dots popping up next to works in the show suggested people were buying. According to Clemence, Guetta’s young, omnipresent assistant — “She’s like my mother,” he said during the interview, “she wakes me up and tells me to do more interviews” — the portraits were priced from ten to forty thousand dollars, and rumors abounded that some of the largest installations had sold for as much as $120,000.
Mr. Brainwash represents, in a sense, an art critic’s worst nightmare: a complete leveling of culture, with every exhibition celebrated with a round of cheap applause and a fresh infusion of cash — the more derivative the work, the better. His art embodies the old fear that Duchamp’s readymade will be read not an aesthetic challenge — to make meaningful art when all things are suddenly allowed — but a license for complete triviality: it’s art because someone says it is, and it’s all equally wonderful.
These are not concerns for Mr. Brainwash, though. “Art is not something difficult to do,” he explained nonchalantly, when asked why he did his work. “You just need to pick up a brush and do it.”
By Andrew Russeth
Source: ARTINFO
Tags: arT exhibition, arT installtions, arThou, arTists, conceptual arT, culture, filmmakers, Mr. Brainwash, paintings, portraits, street arTists, Thierry Guetta, unusual arT
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Wednesday, February 17th, 2010
Whether it is an illusionist or sideshow freak, a rock band in an art gallery or a matinee performance of folk music at one of the cafes along the street, the Parkdale Village Business Improvement Area (PVBIA) has amassed quite a schedule of funky and fun west-end talent to draw you out to Fireside Culture Week.
The second annual Fireside Culture Week starts Feb. 22. It’s a weeklong celebration of art, fashion, food, music and theatre that features the best of best of this artistic nook of Toronto.
 Artists bring their unique styles to Fireside Culture Week. This series of live performance will take place at a number of venues along Queen Street West between Dufferin Street and Roncesvalles Avenue.
The BIA has partnered with Heart and Stroke Foundation as part of their Heart Month events. During Fireside 2010, the PVBIA will be fundraising for Heart and Stroke Foundation by asking attendees at the shows to make a donation as they enter.
There are any number of events planned for each day and evening of Fireside culture week. Visit www.firesidecultureweek.com for an updated schedule.
Here are some highlights:
Nymphetamine – The Sideshow Performer
A falling ovation, as it is called when someone passes out during a performance, is the highest form of praise for a sideshow performer, according to Jennifer Booth.
Booth, who goes by the stage name Nymphetamine, is a circus sideshow performer, a dominatrix by day and self-described freak.
“I always joke that I was always called a freak in high school and now I get paid for it,” said the 31-year-old performer.
A sideshow performer for six years, Nymphetamine performs an intense combination of classic stunts such as cinder block breaks, laying on a bed of nails and walking on broken glass as well as modern stunts such as flesh-hook suspensions and lifting objects with her piercing.
Nymphetamine, who also has a degree in philosophy and training as a paramedic, said she has always had some unusual tastes.
Born and raised in Toronto, Nymphetamine was introduced to the art of sideshow performing by a friend from New York City.
“When I saw him do it I immediately went from ‘You’re absolutely crazy,’ to ‘Hey, that looks like a lot of fun’,” she said.
So she started to explore the art form, which she said was relatively easy to learn.
Now a resident of the Dundas Street and Dufferin Street area, Nymphetamine performs all over the city, usually at night clubs.
“You always get the young guys right up at the front of the stage screaming and wanting to see blood and wanting to see something go wrong,” she said. “And then there are the people who are absolutely fascinated, but happy to stand a ways back from the stage.”
The details around Nymphetamine’s Fireside Culture week performance are yet to be announced.
Visit www.myspace.com/nymphetaminesideshow for more on Nymphetamine.
Jef Kearn – The Urban Flautist
Jef Kearn, 33, takes band geek and turns it urban chic with the soulful sounds of his solo flute songs.
“I started playing about 20 years ago,” he said. “I started taking lessons and I just stuck with it. I kind of felt drawn to it.”
He went to school at Humber College and then York University to study music, but his brand of music isn’t what one would traditionally expect from the flute.
Kearns, who now lives in Mimico, grew up in Chatham listening to broadcasts of urban music radio stations out of Detroit. Before he was a teenager, he was transposing hip-hop lines and verse into the rhythms of his flute.
Now he has crafted a unique style of flute-focused R’n'B that cross genres from modern soul to hip-hop to classic Motown.
His CD of original tracks, On The Level, features nine tracks including I Wanna Be the One (Savage Groove Mix), which spent five weeks in the Top 10 of the Canada National House Music Charts.
Kearns is slated to perform on Friday, Feb. 25 at the Local Kitchen from 8 to 9 p.m.
Visit www.myspace.com/jefkearns for more on Kearns.
Brian Byrne and The Flamming Hoops
You may recognize Brian Byrne’s name as the lead singer of I Mother Earth, but since the band took a hiatus, Byrne has released two solo albums, opened a tattoo shop in Parkdale and performs regularly with his hobby band, The Flaming Hoops.
“The thing we do with the Flaming Hoops is just totally silly fun,” he said. “It is all covers and we cover a bunch of old country classics and on the flip side we cover classic rock, but done country.”
“I just wanted to be part of it,” he said of the Fireside Culture Week. “Anything that is going to help bring people around, because I do love this area… it is so eclectic and crazy.”
Byrne, 35, was chosen as the new lead singer of the Canadian alternative rock band I Mother Earth after singer Edwin left the band in 1997.
The Flaming Hoops is comprised Christian Tanna from I Mother Earth, Gerry Finn from David Usher and Chuck Dailey from The Salads.
“I have always been a massive country fan because that is kind of what I grew up on,” said the Newfoundland native. “All the people in the band have been road dogs forever so this was an opportunity to go play for the weekend without any pressure and not be out on the road promoting your next great project that ultimately leaves you broke and wondering why you do it anyway.”
The shows, he said, are simply fun. The Flamming Hoops cover songs like The Trouper by Iron Maiden, Crazy Train by Ozzy Osborne in a country fashion. They also cover songs by the usual country suspects like Hank Williams, Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
“We even do Footloose by Kenny Loggins,” he said with a laugh.
Byrne, who lives in Kingsway Village in the city’s west end, is scheduled to perform on Saturday, Feb. 26. The location is yet to be announced.
Visit www.myspace.com/brianbyrne for more on Byrne.
Winston Spear – The Funny Man
Winston Spear loves to dance and apparently people love to watch him do it. The comedian has a video of a Bollywood-inspired dance, which has gotten more than a million hits.
He’ll be bringing his trademark dance moves as well as a few jokes to Parkdale for the Fireside Culture Week.
Spear, 45, is a Canadian standup comedian and actor from the Bloor West and Dundas area.
A working comedian for more than 20 years, Spear was a member of the cast of the popular CTV sketch comedy show Comedy Inc.
“I’m a pretty clean act,” Spear said. “I only have a few dirty jokes.”
Spear is scheduled to perform on Thursday, Feb. 24 during a comedy night, also featuring Jamie Rallison and Parker Seville, at the Snowball Gallery, 1690 Queen St. W., from 7 to 11 p.m.
You can view videos of Spear’s comedy at www.youtube.com.
ByErin Hatfield
Source: InsideToronto.com
Tags: alternative rock, arT, arT event, arT festival, arT form, arT gallery, arThou, Brian Byrne, Canada arT, fire arT, Fireside, Fireside Culture Week, flautist, flute music, I Mother Earth, Jef Kearn, Jennifer Booth, music, Nymphetamine, performance, sideshow performance, standup comedy, The Flamming Hoops, The Funny Man, Toronto arT, Winston Spear
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Monday, February 15th, 2010
At its most creative and inspired, philanthropy can alter lives, or even a society. That is the message of “A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund,” a thoughtful show at the Montclair Art Museum.
 “Harriet Tubman,” a 1931 oil painting by Aaron Douglas. The Rosenwald Fund was a philanthropic organization created in 1917 by the Chicago businessman Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), who made a fortune as the part owner, president and chief executive of Sears, Roebuck & Company. His philanthropy supported the building of more than 5,000 schools for black students in the South and gave stipends to hundreds of black artists, writers, teachers and scholars.
The current exhibition, which originated last year at the Spertus Museum in Chicago, presents around 60 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper by 22 Rosenwald fellows, who included such notable artists as Gordon Parks, Jacob Lawrence and Elizabeth Catlett. Most, but not all, of the artists are black; the program also offered fellowships to white Southerners with an interest in and concern for race relations.
 “I Have Special Reservations,” a linoleum cut from the Negro Woman series done in 1946 and 1947 by Elizabeth Catlett. The art on view dates from roughly the late 1920s to the late 1940s, a period when the fund was active as a grant-making body under the leadership of Edwin Rogers Embree. Mr. Rosenwald, whose philanthropy was influenced by Emil G. Hirsch, a Chicago rabbi, and Booker T. Washington, believed that charities should devote their entire resources to addressing an immediate cause. The fund was devised to spend itself out of existence within 25 years of his death, and it officially closed in 1948.
The show is arranged mostly according to the order in which artists received fellowships, beginning with Augusta Savage, a talented but not particularly well known sculptor, teacher and activist associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was the first visual artist to get a fellowship, which enabled her to study in Europe. “Gamin” (circa 1929), a realistic, painted plaster portrait of a black street child, was produced shortly before she left for France.
 “Slow Down Freight Train,” which Rose Piper completed in 1947 while on a Julius Rosenwald Fund fellowship in 1946. Many of the artists in this show broach social themes in their work. Charles Alston made evocative pictures of farm life and poverty in the South, like “Farm Boy,” showing here, an affecting portrait done in 1941, during his fellowship. It is painted in a realistic style that owes much to the work of the regionalist artists John Steuart Curry and Thomas Hart Benton.
“Farm Boy” won a purchase prize at the first annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Prints by Negro Artists of America at Atlanta University in 1942. It is one of the better paintings in the show, along with “Harriet Tubman” (1931), an expansive, sensual mural painted in a flat, simplified style by Aaron Douglas, who got a fellowship in 1937 to travel in the South and in Haiti. The work shows Tubman, the antislavery activist, breaking the shackles of bondage.
Though “Harriet Tubman” predates the fellowship period, it was commissioned by Mr. Rosenwald’s son-in-law, Alfred K. Stern, according to the exhibition catalog, which cites an article in the N.A.A.C.P. magazine The Crisis. Insofar as the mural emphasizes heroes and heroines of black history, it is also typical of a lot of work in this exhibition. Several linoleum cuts from the Negro Woman series by Ms. Catlett depict extraordinary women like Tubman and Phillis Wheatley, one of the first black poets to be published in America.
 “The Drapemaker,” which Haywood Bill Rivers painted in 1947 during his fellowship. Lamar Baker and Robert Gwathmey were two Southern white artists who received fellowships, in 1942 and 1944, respectively. Though neither was very talented, in my opinion, they shared an awareness of and sensitivity toward the cultural and historical roots of the black experience in America; Mr. Gwathmey painted images of black musicians in a style borrowed from Picasso, while Mr. Baker, a painter and printmaker, often dealt with the legacy of slavery.
Three early photographs by Mr. Parks, including perhaps his most famous image, “American Gothic, Washington D.C.” (1942), produced during the year of his fellowship, attest to the importance of Mr. Rosenwald’s bold and creative philanthropy. Produced when the artist was unknown, it shows a black cleaning woman posed before an American flag with a broom and a mop.
There are other interesting things here worth lingering over, including half a dozen Jacob Lawrence prints and some modernist works by Ronald Joseph and Charles Sebree.
Not all these artists went on to have successful careers, but that seems beside the point. Their work promoted new images of black Americans and challenged accepted, often racist notions of black creativity.
“A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund,” Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, through July 25. Information: (973) 746-5555 or montclairartmuseum.org.
By Benjamin Genoccio
Source: New York Times
Tags: arT, arT Events, arT exhibition, arT history, arThou, black arTists, Montclair Art Museum, painting, sculpture
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