Seligmann was the first of the Surrealists to leave Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War. During a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Seligmann struck up a conversation with art historian Meyer Schapiro. The two became good friends and collaborated on this reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Oedipus, Seligmann producing six large etchings to illustrate the tragic story. Exposed on a hillside by his father, the King of Thebes, Oedipus was rescued and raised in obscurity. Eventually the prophecy was fulfilled: Oedipus unknowingly slew his father, Laius, and, upon marrying his mother, became King of Thebes. Once the truth was revealed, his mother, Iocasta, hanged herself. Oedipus in despair blinded himself and was banished to Colonus by his sons.
Seligmann’s etchings convey a grandeur befitting one of the best-known myths of ancient Greece, and also one of the archetypal stories of modern psychoanalysis. Such deeply embedded drives of the collective unconscious were favorite topics of the Surrealists; the primal force of such stories were seen, along with dreams, as avenues into the subconscious and irrational dimensions of the imagination. Seligmann uses plate tone, the faint film of ink at the outer edges of the compositions, to contribute to the dreamlike depiction of space, and also to provide tonal nuances within the figures.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Seligmann was the first of the Surrealists to leave Europe at the outbreak of the Second World War. During a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Seligmann struck up a conversation with art historian Meyer Schapiro. The two became good friends and collaborated on this reinterpretation of the Greek myth of Oedipus, Seligmann producing six large etchings to illustrate the tragic story. Exposed on a hillside by his father, the King of Thebes, Oedipus was rescued and raised in obscurity. Eventually the prophecy was fulfilled: Oedipus unknowingly slew his father, Laius, and, upon marrying his mother, became King of Thebes. Once the truth was revealed, his mother, Iocasta, hanged herself. Oedipus in despair blinded himself and was banished to Colonus by his sons.
Seligmann’s etchings convey a grandeur befitting one of the best-known myths of ancient Greece, and also one of the archetypal stories of modern psychoanalysis. Such deeply embedded drives of the collective unconscious were favorite topics of the Surrealists; the primal force of such stories were seen, along with dreams, as avenues into the subconscious and irrational dimensions of the imagination. Seligmann uses plate tone, the faint film of ink at the outer edges of the compositions, to contribute to the dreamlike depiction of space, and also to provide tonal nuances within the figures.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Among Akan-speaking peoples of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, merchants and traders used weights to weigh golddust, by placing an amount of golddust on one scale of a hand-held balance, and a weight such as this one on the other. All traders used to have their own set of weights, and for a transaction, each trader would weigh the golddust using his own weights. There were no fixed shapes or forms to represent a particular weight (or amount of gold dust), but each trader would have weights in a variety of shapes and sizes and would know the mass of all the weights in his own collection.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This painting depicts a lush green countryside with an expanse of blue sky. It shows a hillside overlooking a small lake. There is a vista of fields and hills that extends beyond the lake to the horizon.
In the foreground, a woman wearing a long dress and a bonnet and carrying a walking stick and basket, walks toward the viewer along a dirt path. The path runs from a building on the far left toward the bottom of the painting. The vegetation is painted in sharp detail in dark tones of green and brown.
In the right half of the composition, there is a scene of a distant village and farms viewed through the trees on the edge of the hillside. In contrast to the shadowy wooded area, the view is bathed in bright sunlight. There is a lone bird in flight in the light blue sky that fills the top half of the painting.
Subject Matter
In 1849 Herman Herzog entered the Dusseldorf Art Academy and studied with Achenbach and Schirme, two painters who were known for their literal and precise style of landscape painting. This work illustrates his training in the academic tradition of landscape painting. It has a balanced composition with foreground, middleground, background and atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of spatial depth. Tree formations and sunlight direct the viewer's eye back through the painting to the faraway village scene. Herzog's realism is especially evident in the foreground scene where the pathway and foliage are painted in exact detail. Although the actual locale is not identified, this scene is reminiscent of the Hudson River School style of painting with which Herzog is also identified.
Label Copy
President's House object Summary
Hermann Herzog was born in Bremen, Germany. In 1849 he enrolled at the Art Academy in Dusseldorf. Over the next few years he continued to study landscape painting while traveling widely, including visits to Switzerland, Italy and the Pyrenees in search of subjects. His most influential teacher was Hans Gude, a Norwegian landscape painter who urged the young painter to see Norway, an important experience in his art education. Herzog became quite successful as a landscapist in Europe, counting among his patrons both Queen Vistoria and Czar Alexander.
In 1896, Herzog journeyed to the United States, eventually settling in Philadelphia. He continued to travel for landscape subjects, first heading to the American West in 1873 and continuing over the years through Utah, California, Colorado, and Nevada. Later in his life he painted southern landscapes while visiting his son in Florida.
This work by Herzog is in a style that attests to his training in a 19th enctury art academy: the paint is applied thinly, the technique is polished, and there is a quietness to the scene. A figure and some houses give a sense of scale to the landscape that unfolds below a big bluish golden sky. The green of the foliage and trees and the distant hill bathed in golden light suggest summertime, and the shadowed foreground and sun-drenched hill hint at a time near sunset.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Like his contemporary Yamamoto Baiitsu, Chikutô was a native of Nagoya and a protegé of Kamiya Ten'yü, a wealthy collector of Chinese paintings. Both men went to Kyoto in 1803 to further their painting studies. They were active in the circle of the Sinophile scholar Rai San'yô, and worked occasionally with other literati artists, including Uragami Shunkin. Chikutô's work shows a much deeper knowledge of Chinese literati painting of the Ming and Qing periods, and he wrote several treatises on painting. He issued woodblock print books of his work in 1800 and 1815, both times under the title, Chikutô gafu.
Chikuto was the son of a doctor from Nagoya. Under the tutelage of a wealthy Chinese painting collector, Chikuto was able to establish his own painting studio at the age of twenty. He was able to organize and publish old Chinese treatises on painting and establish them as theories of the Nanga school. The orderly arrangement and even brushwork of the orchids and bamboo on this pair of scrolls are quiet and tranquil. As a rule, his execution is inclined to be disciplined and conservative.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Like his contemporary Yamamoto Baiitsu, Chikutô was a native of Nagoya and a protegé of Kamiya Ten'yü, a wealthy collector of Chinese paintings. Both men went to Kyoto in 1803 to further their painting studies. They were active in the circle of the Sinophile scholar Rai San'yô, and worked occasionally with other literati artists, including Uragami Shunkin. Chikutô's work shows a much deeper knowledge of Chinese literati painting of the Ming and Qing periods, and he wrote several treatises on painting. He issued woodblock print books of his work in 1800 and 1815, both times under the title, Chikutô gafu.
Chikuto was the son of a doctor from Nagoya. Under the tutelage of a wealthy Chinese painting collector, Chikuto was able to establish his own painting studio at the age of twenty. He was able to organize and publish old Chinese treatises on painting and establish them as theories of the Nanga school. The orderly arrangement and even brushwork of the orchids and bamboo on this pair of scrolls are quiet and tranquil. As a rule, his execution is inclined to be disciplined and conservative.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
This is a delicate landscape. There are mountain crags, dispersed trees and bushes, and some houses/huts depicted. There is calligraphy on the upper right hand corner with one red seal, and towards the upper left corner with a red seal. There is also another red seal on the lower left hand corner. The colors are muted and are barely discernable from one another. There is a central jutting rock in the center of the painting that takes up a lot of horizontal space, and encourages the eye to travel upwards.
Subject Matter
This work depicts Mount Huang (Yellow Mountain), located in Anhui province in south-central China. A site of extraordinary natural beauty noted for its range of rocky peaks, it was a favorite subject of poets and painters for centuries. For artists from the region, including Sun Yi, whose hometown was at the foot of the peaks, Mount Huang was an inexhaustible theme. After the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) fell to the invading Manchus, Mount Huang took on a particular political significance. The isolated red peak towering/jutting above the surrounding green mountains in this painting most likely alludes to the struggle of the failing Ming court against the onslaught of the Manchus. This interpretation is strengthened by the artist’s inscription, which references/quotes a description of Mount Lu by the writer Wang Siren (dates?), known for his loyalty to the Ming court. Wang describes the mountain as “a red-colored castle on fire,” whose “high pinnacle almost pierces through the many layers of clouds.” [These words in combination with the image suggest Sun Yi’s [hopes for the eventual triumph of [Manchu-ruled Qing].
Examples of Sun Yi’s painting are extremely rare; The Cinnabar Peak, his only painting outside of China, is by far the finest example. (171 words)
Label Copy
Inscription: The Cinnabar Peak is like a red-colored castle on fire … Sun Yi
Seal of the artist
Colophon by a collector (at upper right) followed by two seals
Like Mount Lu, the rocky range of peaks in south central China known as Mount Huang (Yellow Mountain) is a site of extraordinary natural beauty, deeply embedded in Chinese cultural memory. For artists from Anhui province, like Sun Yi, whose hometown was at the foot of the peaks, Mount Huang was an inexhaustible subject. After the Ming dynasty fell to the invading Manchus, Mount Huang took on additional layers of political symbolism.
The artist wrote in the upper left corner:
The Cinnabar Peak is like a red-colored castle on fire. Its high pinnacle almost pierces through the many layers of clouds. Amid thousands of green mountains, this pointed peak looks as if it were painted in the so-called “boneless wash–mountain style.” I painted this picture based on the above description quoted from Wang Jichong’s “The Record of Travels to Mount Lu.”
—painted in the early winter of the dingyu year [1657] [signed] Sun Yi
Examples of Sun Yi’s painting are extremely rare; The Cinnabar Peak, his only painting outside of China, is by far the finest example.
Gallery Rotation Winter 2012
Sun Yi
China, active mid-17th century
Cinnabar Peak
Qing dynasty (1644–1912)
1657
Hanging scroll, ink and light color on paper
Gift of Professor Richard and Vee Ling Edwards, 1987/1.155
This landscape was created not long after the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) had fallen to the Manchus and it is likely a politically-charged allegory of the exiled Ming court’s struggle to regain power during the early years of the Manchu-ruled Qing dyansty. It depicts Mount Huang (Yellow Mountain), located in Anhui province in south-central China, a site of extraordinary natural beauty noted for its range of rocky peaks and a favorite subject of poets and painters for centuries. The prominent red peak jutting above the surrounding green mountains, however, is unconventional in depictions of Mount Huang. According to the artist’s inscription, the painting is based on a description of far away Mount Lu by the writer Wang Siren (1575–1646), known for his resistance against Manchu rule. Wang describes the mountain as “a red-colored castle on fire,” whose “high pinnacle almost pierces through the many layers of clouds.” The pronunciation of the character for cinnabar in Chinese alludes to the name of the Ming royal family, while the character for the color green is pronounced ching, a reference to the Manchu court (the character for Ching also means clear as green water). In 1657, the year the painting was made, the last Ming ruler and final hope for the restoration of a Ming government had been forced to withdraw to near the border of modern Burma. The use of metaphor disguises the artist’s political loyalty, reducing the risk of persecution.
Examples of Sun Yi’s painting are extremely rare; The Cinnabar Peak, his only painting outside of China, is by far the finest example.
Inscription
Inscription and seal of artist; Colophon and two seals by Yie Chung-lu (20th century)
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Standing bronze figure with recto/verso. The silhouette of the body is rectangular in shape. The heads on both side are simply rendered with rounded eyes and a pursed -lip mouth on one, a button nose on the other; bodies are supported by short legs; sides loosely suggest representations of male and female anatomy with side-by-side scallop shells suggesting a breasted chest on one side, an upward facing frog/toad in the phallus area on the reverse side.
Subject Matter
This figurine with its primitivist style and use of animal iconography suggests a ritual totemic figure. One side represents man. The other side represents woman. Title references the Roman god Janus the god of doorways, and thus of beginnings and endings, or of the point in time between past and future. Janus was depicted as having two faces, so he could look simultaneously forward and backward
Label Copy
After Ernst arrived in the United States, he eventually settled in Arizona with his second wife, the artist Dorothea Tanning. Ernst was extremely well-read, and expressed a great interest in the art of other cultures—Africa, Oceania, and Native America. Janus Bird incorporates some of the artist’s fascination with the totemic emblems of other cultures, such as the turtle and frog. The name of this work is derived from the Roman god Janus; although the sculpture is double-faced, its duality has to do with sexual identity rather than Roman tradition. The frog and turtle become genitalia on this figure composed of discrete elements combined in an additive manner.
Ernst’s fascination with birds dates back to a particularly memorable childhood experience. A beloved pet bird died on the same day as the birth of Ernst’s sister, and these two incidents remained linked in a mysterious connection in the artist’s mind. Scholars have also described his bird-creation Loplop as an alter ego of the artist. The portentous bird association seems to resonate in the Janus Bird. Here the whimsical elements are combined to create a work full of mysterious life.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998
Inscription
Inscribed on base below frog: max ernst Foundry mark (within diamond) on base below signature: CIRE/A. VALSUANI/PERDUE 12/18
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Signed outside photo, l.r. corner: Ansel Adams Inscribed verso center: [stamped] Photograph by Ansel Adams/ Museum Set Edition/ Route I Box 181 Carmel, California/ [stamped] negative made [handwritten in ink] C-1938 [stamped] Print made [handwritten in ink] 1980/ [stamped] Identification number [handwritten in ink] 1873
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
Signed outside photo on mount l.r. corner: Ansel Adams Inscribed center verso: [stamped] Photograph by Ansel Adams/ Museum Set Edition/ Route I Box 181 Carmel, California 93923/ [handwritten in ink] Merced Tiver, Cliffs,/ Autumn, Yosemite Valley, California/ [stamped] Negative made [handwritten in ink] C-1939 [stamped] Print made [handwritten in ink] 1980/ [stamped] Identification number [handwritten in ink] 2067
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
If you are interested in using an image for a publication, please fax a request to the attention of Orian Neumann, Assistant Registrar, at 734-474-7643. For other queries, email orian@umich.edu.edu.
