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ROMANCING THE LANDSCAPE
Curator: Larry Jens Anderson
During the 'Golden Age' of Holland, the era of Rembrandt (1606-1669) and Vermeer (1632-1675), there was a more famous artist, Jacob can Ruisdael (1628/9-1682). Ruisdael was a masterful landscape painter and helped bring credibility to the genre. His large and small paintings range from panoramic vistas of the flat landscape to dense forest, to thatched farm cottages along a meandering stream. Holland’s coastal cities were commercial powerhouses, its navy and shipping trade were the greatest in Europe and all gave way to human exodus from the rural areas. As agrarian cultures adjust to the urban treadmill of commerce, visions of a simpler life become popular icons; each landscape painting became a window, a romanticized escape.
Georgia has also been transformed from an agrarian culture to one of urban commerce. In the MOCA GA collection, Georgia artists are represented by an abundance of landscape imagery. All may be described as romantic in temperament but the possibilities in art have expanded since the 17th century and there is now more than escapism. Other variations include metaphorical images of powerful natural forces, the isolation and introspection of something natural, and the modernist appropriation of the rhythmic patterns in nature. A few of the images can be pigeonholed into one of the aforementioned categories, but most share ideals from two or more.
'A TRADITION OF ROMANCE'
Harris Dimitropoulos pushes the romantic metaphor of the landscape. By painting on a church-window shaped canvas, he gives his hilltop view of the valley a religious interpretation. Frank Hunter and Lawrence Huff remove any human overtones by focusing on one of Georgia’s treasures: its forest. Genevieve Arnold puts forth an unpopulated landscape on a fictional ruin: man disappears and the environment reclaims itself.
'NATURE AS FORCE'
Nature is not passive. Random acts such as floods and storms, plus regulated periods such as darkness continuously remind us just how little control we have. Norman Wagner emotionally depicts the fury and noise of a violent storm over a forest. Sally Speed removes any recognizable objects from her abstraction and adds fire within the storm. Andy Nasisse sculpted from nature’s soil (clay) a gruesome, morphic tower that would fit well into the scariest forest supplied by the Grimm Brothers. Genevieve Arnold, Cedric DeSouza, Richard Sudden and Daniel Troppy marry with the romance of nature a dark mystery. John Tweddle lets the natural act of making art reveal itself as similar to the process of nature shedding itself on the forest floor.
'NATURE AS INSPIRATION'
Artists have continuously found inspiration in nature’s objects. Richard Mafong drew inspiration from cactus forms and produced an elegant but dangerous looking sculpted vase with some of nature’s most valued materials: silver and gold. Maria Artemis and Jim Waters manipulated more primitive natural materials, not in an effort to mimic nature, but to make a shine of it. Nene Humphrey and Amy Landesberg constructed forms that are pod-like – organic, but not specific. Deanna Sirlin is specific, not so much in depicting a certain place, but by integrating the relationship between sky and land.
'NOT NATURE, BUT SEEMINGLY NATURAL'
None of these works are overtly dependent on nature for meaning but possess characteristics of the natural world, its dependence on repetition and pattern. Edward Ross’s painting has the spirit of color and pattern that might bounce off undulating water on a bright day. Katherine Mitchell dances lines across the picture plane in seemingly random patterns not unlike an overlapping image of sapling branches blowing in the wind. There is no worldly description for Howard Thomas’s elegant gouache painting, but it has organic, microscopic inspection that mimics the chaos that constructs natural forms.
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FIGURE IT OUT
Curator: Amalia Amaki
I thought it would be fun to see how many different images in the collection might be viewed as addressing ambiguous space, while making various figurative references. It was also important to see if and how the selected works could be sequenced to create a story that was derived purely from that arrangement. In so doing, time becomes another important element and a significant, underlying part of the story.
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Curator: Mario Petrirena
I want to thank Annette Cone-Skelton for the opportunity to curate this on-line exhibition. This is an interesting and innovative concept that will enrich our art community.
I chose 24 pieces by 18 artists. I reviewed the entire collection several times to make my selections. At one time, I attempted to justify my choices. Quickly abandoning this mindset, I decided that I would enjoy the experience of choosing pieces I responded to.
It is important that artists be collected in-depth. It was wonderful to see several pieces by Katherine Mitchell and Susan Loftin in the MOCA GA collection. It was great to experience the development of Mitchell’s work and to be reminded of the wonderful contributions Loftin has made to our community.
There is such a beauty in the works of Rowe, Hunter, Arnold, Carpenter, Landesberg, Ross, Creecy and Waters (one of my favorite pieces in the collection), that one cannot help but be moved.
Currie, Rodriguez, Jones, Schreiber, Koegel, Belville, and Huckaby take the viewer on journeys that are mysterious, intriguing and enlightening.
Then there was Ned Cartledge, whose work always reminds me that someone with a conscience has made them; that there is hope and laughter.
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