A suite of 15 lithographs and a composite gage in four colors hand drawn on aluminum plates and printed from those plates by hand. Printed in an edition of 50 on Italia paper by Landfall Press, Inc. Size: 23 x 23”. Contained in a paper box designed by Sol LeWitt with the cooperation of Service Bindery of Chicago, Ill.
Subject Matter
a square formed by a mass of randomly distributed but densely packed yellow vertical lines, all approx one-inch in length
Label Copy
March 28, 2009
“Serial components are multipartite pieces with regulated changes,” wrote LeWitt in 1966, and “the differences between the parts are the subject of the composition.” He began to explore seriality as a mode of composition in the mid-1960s, as he shifted from a sculptural practice associated with Minimalism into what has come to be known as conceptual art. For LeWitt, as for others at the time, seriality provided a means to eliminate the artist’s ego from his work because it resulted from a predetermined progression rather than a number of subjective—and ultimately arbitrary—decisions on the part of the artist. Serial compositions thus precluded traditional notions of expressivity. As LeWitt put it, “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” In this untitled suite of prints, as in nearly all of LeWitt’s work, the conceptual precepts that determine the composition are both visually evident and explained textually in the suite’s final component.
Inscription
Signed in pencil, lower right: LeWitt; l.l.: 6/50 On verso stamp of publisher and publisher's number in pencil
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.
A suite of 15 lithographs and a composite gage in four colors hand drawn on aluminum plates and printed from those plates by hand. Printed in an edition of 50 on Italia paper by Landfall Press, Inc. Size: 23 x 23”. Contained in a paper box designed by Sol LeWitt with the cooperation of Service Bindery of Chicago, Ill.
Subject Matter
a square formed by a mass of randomly distributed but densely packed yellow vertical lines, all approx one-inch in length
Label Copy
March 28, 2009
“Serial components are multipartite pieces with regulated changes,” wrote LeWitt in 1966, and “the differences between the parts are the subject of the composition.” He began to explore seriality as a mode of composition in the mid-1960s, as he shifted from a sculptural practice associated with Minimalism into what has come to be known as conceptual art. For LeWitt, as for others at the time, seriality provided a means to eliminate the artist’s ego from his work because it resulted from a predetermined progression rather than a number of subjective—and ultimately arbitrary—decisions on the part of the artist. Serial compositions thus precluded traditional notions of expressivity. As LeWitt put it, “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art.” In this untitled suite of prints, as in nearly all of LeWitt’s work, the conceptual precepts that determine the composition are both visually evident and explained textually in the suite’s final component.
Inscription
Signed in pencil, lower right: LeWitt; l.l.: 6/50 On verso stamp of publisher and publisher's number in pencil
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.
A suite of 15 lithographs and a composite gage in four colors hand drawn on aluminum plates and printed from those plates by hand. Printed in an edition of 50 on Italia paper by Landfall Press, Inc. Size: 23 x 23”. Contained in a paper box designed by Sol LeWitt with the cooperation of Service Bindery of Chicago, Ill.
Subject Matter
a square formed by a mass of randomly distributed but densely packed yellow vertical, and red and blue diagonal lines; all approx one-inch in length
Inscription
Signed in pencil, lower right: LeWitt; l.l.: 6/50 On verso stamp of publisher and publisher's number in pencil
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.
A suite of 15 lithographs and a composite gage in four colors hand drawn on aluminum plates and printed from those plates by hand. Printed in an edition of 50 on Italia paper by Landfall Press, Inc. Size: 23 x 23”. Contained in a paper box designed by Sol LeWitt with the cooperation of Service Bindery of Chicago, Ill.
Subject Matter
a square formed by a mass of randomly distributed but densely packed black horizontal, yellow vertical and blue diagonal lines, all approx one-inch in length
Inscription
Signed in pencil, lower right: LeWitt; l.l.: 6/50 On verso stamp of publisher and publisher's number in pencil
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.
pen and ink drawing on half inch grid graph paper ruled in blue
Subject Matter
abstract deconstructed geometric linear form
Label Copy
March 28, 2009
Like his fellow Bauhaus professor Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Albers was preoccupied throughout his long career with perceptual ambiguity. In this drawing, created two decades after Albers had immigrated to the United States, a geometric shape floats in an undefined and seemingly infinite space, denying the stable viewpoint associated with traditional perspective.
After leaving Germany in 1933, Albers brought the Bauhaus model of experimentation in art, craft, and architecture to the United States at the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, where he and his wife, Anni, taught from 1933 to 1949. At Black Mountain and subsequently at the Yale University Art School, where he chaired the Department of Design from 1950 to 1958, Albers exerted a powerful influence on the development of postwar American art.
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.
Carved wooden figure of a human. The umbilicus protrudes and is concave, which would have held magical/medicinal substances. The figure is posed with crossed legs and one hand supprting the head. The face is detailed.
Subject Matter
Nkisi is a generic term for a class of power objects. These objects are employed as solutions to social and physical problems. They are ritually charged objects, abile to facilitate movement of spirits between differnet points of existence. This figure's crossed legs and arm positioning (one up, one down) signify the ability to connect different points.
Label Copy
This is a small, intact seated fetish with inlaid eyes, with fetish material missing. The pose with the hand to the chin, is a guardian, to protect, for divination and healing rituals.*
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.
During the Muromachi period in Japan (1333–1573), trade with China was often handled through the agency of Zen Buddhist monks, who had learned Chinese through their religious studies. Several Zen monks traveled in person to the great Chan monasteries in southeast China and on their return brought back not only new Buddhist teachings but also the material and visual culture of late Song and Yuan dynasty China. As a consequence, the Zen monasteries of Kyoto became centers of Chinese learning and promoted the study of Chinese poetry, painting, and the art of drinking tea. The tea bowls the Japanese monks discovered in southeast China were the black glazed ware from the Jian kilns, known in Japan as tenmoku. The most highly prized varieties of tenmoku were those with the descriptively named "iridescent", "oil spot", and "hare’s fur" glazes. Modern potters in both China and Japan continue to work in these glazes to satisfy the contemporary market for tea wares. This object is an example of modern tenmoku ware.
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.
Abstract shape rendered in Styrofoam that has been covered with modeling compound. Base with four columns, three of which have “pop dots” attached to them. Partially painted a bright minty green, which gets darker in the “back” of the sculpture (the side that doesn’t have dots).
Subject Matter
The artist describes her work as “a hybridization of painting and sculpture…. The sources of imagery have developed from purely formal abstraction to investigations of Indian and subsequently Pre-Columbian sources. The work melds painting and sculptural form sometimes enhancing the three dimensional and other times obscuring it.” (artist’s statement, http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile/Jill+Levine/44692.html) This work is an example of “purely formal abstraction,” although its shape and bright color are reminiscent of sea coral.
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.
Against a black background three smoke rings hang, connected by wafts of smoke. Two of the rings are in the viewer's lower left. One is in the viewer's upper right.
Subject Matter
The tradition of still life painting applied to the ephemeral phenomenon of smoke rings. Emphasizes the beauty of the everyday and of transient things.
Label Copy
March 28 2009
Donald Sultan’s Smoke Rings seem to float in defiance of the heavy materials with which they are produced: black tar and spackle, the substance used for patching holes in plaster and drywall. Sultan, who began using these kinds of materials when he was a construction worker, paints in the tradition of still life, but rather than reproducing what the eye sees, he draws attention to what it often misses, revealing the abstract visual qualities of commonplace things. His use of unorthodox media and manipulation of scale provokes a sense of strangeness that slows recognition of his subjects, allowing for minute examination of their aesthetic qualities. In Smoke Rings Sultan arrests and monumentalizes a transitory phenomenon: languid, spiraling curls of smoke. At once abstract and hyperreaslistic, the paintings are as much about the graphic gesture of white on black as they are about the beauty to be found in the ordinary world that surround us.
These meditative paintings were originally created specifically for UMMA.
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 work is an abstrated depiction of four cranes and a person.
Subject Matter
Kawano Kaoru is considered a member of the Creative Print (sôsaku hanga) movement, a group of artists dedicated to bringing individualism, experimentation, and autonomy to Japan’s centuries old ukiyo-e tradition. His works are often highly abstracted, using simple lines and shapes to depict the subject.
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.
The theme of the city played a key role in the development of Tobey’s hallmark “white writing” style after his return from an extended trip to China and Japan in 1934. New York, in particular, came to represent a “universal city” for the artist, although he chose to live at a remove from the vibrant art scene that was developing there in the immediate postwar period.
Tobey continually revisited the subject of Broadway, a popular emblem of the spectacle of city lights and....life. His fascination was not, however, simply a matter of romantic glorification. Of his first Broadway painting, he wrote that it “astonished me as much as anyone else. Such a feeling of Hell under a lacy design—delicate in spirit but madness.” This feeling is characteristic of Broadway Melody as well. Its successive overlays of rapidly constructed images and writing (the evocative word “tomorrow” is clearly legible in the upper left corner of the painting) both build up the pictured scene to give a sense of depth, and overwhelm the figures interspersed throughout. The dense repetition from one end of the canvas to the other of similar elements without strong variation would become a defining feature of the Abstract Expressionist style of painting, which Tobey pioneered along with his New York counterparts.
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 work is a depiction of haniwa, clay figures used as tomb burial objects during the Kôfun Period (250–338 CE) that have come to be emblematic of Japanese art and cultural traditions.
Subject Matter
Though initially simple clay cylinders, in the fourth century haniwa began to be shaped as warriors, female shrine attendants, everyday objects, and animals. In Saitô’s presentation these traditional figures are pared down to their essential shapes, their basic geometric components emphasized with blocks of patterns and colors reminiscent of Cubism. Dusted with malachite, Saitô’s prints of haniwa glitter in the light, evoking the dynamism of these occasionally playful clay sculptures.
Saitô Kiyoshi (1907–1997) was a member of the Creative Print (sôsaku hanga) movement, a group of artists dedicated to bringing individualism, experimentation, and autonomy to Japan’s centuries old ukiyo-e tradition. One of the most well-known forms of Japanese art, ukiyo-e is a type of woodblock print that first appeared in the mid- to late Edo period (1615–1868). Cheap to produce, widely available, and very popular in the late eighteenth century, by the early twentieth century when Saitô was working demand for woodblock prints in Japan was waning. Historically the production of ukiyo-e was dominated by giant publisher-controlled studios where the labor was divided and no single artist was responsible for creating an entire work. The Creative Print movement aimed to topple these traditions by bringing control of the woodblock print process into the hands of the individual artist.
In the past even famous ukiyo-e artists like Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849) were responsible only for the initial steps of the process. The artist would draw a design that would be handed off to the carver, who cut around the lines, creating a separate block for each color of the print. Finally, the printer placed paper on top of an inked block and rubbed it with a special pad made of bamboo fibers. Creative Print artists performed each of these steps themselves, seeing a print through from start to finish. This essential difference emphasized the artist as a talented individual and distanced the modern woodblock print from what was seen by many Japanese as its plebian origins. Saitô was a distinguished printmaker, whose success in the international art world helped bring the Creative Print movement to prominence and raised the status of the modern print in Japan.
Label Copy
Creative Print (sôsaku hanga) artists embraced traditional subjects in their modern artwork—a choice that was key to their commercial success. Here Saitô portrays haniwa, clay figures used as tomb burial objects during the Kôfun Period (250–338 CE) that have come to be emblematic of Japanese art and cultural traditions. Though initially simple clay cylinders, in the fourth century haniwa began to be shaped as warriors, female shrine attendants, everyday objects, and animals. In Saitô’s presentation these traditional figures are pared down to their essential shapes, their basic geometric components emphasized with blocks of patterns and colors reminiscent of Cubism. Dusted with malachite, Saitô’s prints of haniwa glitter in the light, evoking the dynamism of these occasionally playful clay sculptures.
(Gallery Rotation Fall 2011)
Gallery Rotation Fall 2011
Saitô Kiyoshi
Japan, 1907–1997
Clay Image (Q)
1954
Showa period (1926–89)
Color woodblock print on paper
Gift of the artist, 1958/2.25
Creative Print (sôsaku hanga) artists embraced traditional subjects in their modern artwork—a choice that was key to their commercial success. Here Saitô portrays haniwa, clay figures used as tomb burial objects during the Kôfun period (250–338 CE) that have come to be emblematic of Japanese art and cultural traditions. Though initially simple clay cylinders, in the fourth century haniwa began to be shaped as warriors, female shrine attendants, everyday objects, and animals. In Saitô’s presentation these traditional figures are pared down to their essential shapes, their basic geometric components emphasized with blocks of patterns and colors reminiscent of Cubism. Dusted with malachite, Saitô’s prints of haniwa glitter in the light, evoking the dynamism of these occasionally playful clay sculptures.
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.
Realistic bone that looks like a femur. The texture and the glazing give it an aged look. The stoneware is porous like a bone.
Subject Matter
Art that tries to fascinate in the way objects from natural history do, like fossils, shells, and old bones. The esthetics of organic line and form.
Label Copy
March 28, 2009
Wonder at the age of the earth and the forms found throughout natural history inspires Michele Oka Doner’s beautifully shaped fossil-like ceramics. A graduate of the University of Michigan, the artist grew up in Florida collecting shells, bits of coral, and other artifacts of life along the seashore. Oka Doner’s oversized ceramic pieces of bones and seedpods highlight the aesthetic qualities of the natural world and suggest the connections of these forms to those created by artists.
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.
An abstracted image of a milkweed plant. Two blossoms in the center, facing opposite directions, create white halo-like shapes around their dark, oblong centers. The bottom of the image has a white streak, while the rest of the print is composed of dark, ink-like background speckled with yellow and reddish out of focus shapes.
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.
Aluminum shaft with block letters cast in black plastic.
Subject Matter
One of a series of sculptures in which Horn transforms language into a physical form. Seen from one angle, the text forms an abstract pattern, while from another it emerges as a poetic phrase: the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem number 1182.
Label Copy
Working across a range of media, Roni Horn often explores the relationship between words and materials. Horn’s Key and Cue sculptures transform language into a physical form that is both text and physical presence. This duality is reflected not only in the text itself—“Remembrance has a Rear and Front”—but also in the way that the work invites viewing from multiple perspectives. Seen from one angle, the text forms an abstract pattern, while from another it emerges as a poetic phrase: the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem number 1182.
Remembrance has a Rear and Front –
‘Tis something like a House –
It has a Garret also
For Refuse and the Mouse.
Besides the deepest Cellar
That ever Mason laid --
Look to it by its Fathoms
Ourselves be not pursued --
Jacob Proctor, Associate Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art
------------------------------
6/28/10
Roni Horn (United States, born 1955)
Key and Cue No. 1182
1994
Aluminum and plastic
Gift of an anonymous donor
Working across a range of media, Roni Horn often explores the relationship between words and materials. Horn’s Key and Cue sculptures transform language into a physical form that is both text and physical presence. This duality is reflected not only in the text itself—“Remembrance has a Rear and Front”—but also in the way that the work invites viewing from multiple perspectives. Seen from one angle, the text forms an abstract pattern, while from another it emerges as a poetic phrase: the first line of Emily Dickinson’s poem number 1182.
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.
Carved wooden figure of a human form. String atatched to the head to represent hair.
Subject Matter
Dolls serve two related functions: they are power objects used to increase a woman's fertility, and they are dolls for girls to practice caring for children. The two are related, as the ability for a woman to care for a child is thought to be linked to her biological fertility.
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.
One of a series of prints by the artist portraying famous Buddhist sculptures of Nara (the capital of Japan in the 8th century and a major monastic center); this one evokes a sculpture of Avalokitesvara (Japanese, Kannon) at Hôryûji Temple on Nara's outskirts. Several other prints from this series are in UMMA's collections.
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.
