A Bright and Bold New Century

Happy New Year and Happy Centennial Year to The Phillips Collection!

We are proud to introduce our refreshed logo―made up of bright and bold colors for a fabulous centennial year and beyond.

Our logo, created in 2014, took a cue from Duncan Phillips’s love of color, and was created from a palette drawn from collection favorites―Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (1880-81), Mark Rothko’s Orange and Red on Red (1957), El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter (1600-1605), and Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series Panel no. 1 (1940-41).

Original logo palette inspiration

For the Centennial, we build on our lively and welcoming brand and introduce colors drawn from recent acquisitions that highlight the diversity of our growing collection. Duncan Phillips intended his collection to grow and evolve, and our refreshed palette reflects the energy and excitement of our next century.

Centennial logo variations

The refreshed logo pulls colors from:

  • Sam Gilliam, Purple Antelope Space Squeeze, 1987, Diptych: Relief, etching, aquatint and collagraph on handmade paper with embossing, hand-painting and painted collage, 41 1/2 in x 81 5/8 in., Bequest of Marion F. and Norman W. Goldin, 2017
  • Angela Bulloch, Heavy Metal Stack: Fat Cyan Three, 2018, Powder coated steel, Made possible with support from Susan and Dixon Butler, Nancy and Charles Clarvit, John and Gina Despres, A. Fenner Milton, Eric Richter, Harvey M. Ross, George Vradenburg and The Vradenburg Foundation
  • Poul Gernes, Untitled (stripe series with ochre as recurring color), 1965, Enamel paint on Masonite board, 16 panels; 48 x 48 in. each, Acquired in 2019 with support from the Ny Carlsberg Fondet
  • Aolar Mosely, Blocks, c. 1955, Cotton, 75 x 83 in., Museum purchase, and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection, 2019
  • Simone Leigh, No Face (Crown Heights), 2018, Terracotta, graphite ink, salt-fired porcelain, epoxy, 20 x 8 x 8 in., Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2018
  • Gene Davis, 65-2, 1965, Acrylic on canvas, 58 1/4 x 74 in., Gift of Richard E. Thompson, 2017
  • Janet Taylor Pickett, And She Was Born, 2017, Acrylic on canvas with collage, 30 x 30 in., Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2020

Centennial palette inspiration

Here’s to 100 years of color and 100 more years of collecting!

John Edmonds’s Engagement with the African Past, African American Present, and Collective Future

Ariana Kaye, The Phillips Collection Sherman Fairchild Fellow 2020-2021, on John Edmonds

On December 15, I had the pleasure of hearing artist John Edmonds talk about his work. In conversation with Dr. Ashley James, the two discussed how Edmonds’s work aims to show how Black people style themselves (or “self-fashion”) and his connection to both African art and to historically white and European art.

Tête d’Homme (2018) (at the Whitney Museum of American Art) and Hood II (2016) (gifted to The Phillips Collection in 2018) exemplify some of the key points that Edmonds talked about during the conversation. Both of these works are photographs. Edmonds emphasized the role that photography has had and still has in authentically or inauthentically portraying Black subjects. In the 19th century and earlier, photography was used to exploit Black people and present them as “others.” In Edmonds’s work, he seeks to reclaim objectifying photography and portrays Black subjects in empowering and true representations. 

LEFT: Pablo Picasso, Tête d’Homme, 1907, Oil on canvas, Merion, Lincoln University, Barnes Foundation; RIGHT: John Edmonds, Tête d’Homme, 2018, Archival pigment photograph, 24 × 30 in., Courtesy of the artist and Company, New York

The French Tête d’Homme, translated to English as “Head of a Man,” references the types of titles that European artists like Picasso would use to title their works, most often inspired by African masks that they collected. By using the title, Edmonds seeks to reclaim the French and art historical linguistic use of the title, and show a head of a real man who is Blackwith a work of art that connects him to his own ancestral past, in order to tell his own story about what the object he is presented with means to him.  

Edmonds also collects African masks and figurines in order to investigate where they come from and which African tribe they could possibly belong to. He usually purchases the objects from different street vendors in New York City. He is not worried about the “authenticity” of the objects, but more about what they represent, that they have all been loved by generations of families and ancestors who appreciated them and used them for different aesthetic and ceremonial purposes. 

John Edmonds, Untitled (Hood 2), 2016, Archival pigment print, 20 x 14 in., The Phillips Collection, Promised gift of Vittorio Gallo, 2018

While masks were used as forms of adornment in earlier centuries, according to Edmonds the new form of that is the hood, the sweatshirt, or the du-rag serving as a mode of selffashioning for Black people today. The hood is seen in Hood IIfrom a series of photographs he started in 2016. We cannot see the face or gender of the person, also representing the universality of the hood—it does not have a gender. Many of Edmonds’s subjects are gender non-conforming individuals, and he believes that creating a society in which these people can live their truth is essential to being modern.  

Dr. James exemplified John Edmonds’s work perfectly during the talk with her remark: “Let’s bring the Black body that caused all the conversation back into the conversation.” In Edmonds’s work, the Black body is the center of the conversation, reclaiming the Black past, present and future 

What is your vision for future Black representation? 

To hear more from John Edmonds, listen to his Conversations with Artists event at the Phillips in 2019:

Phillips at Home: Home for the Holidays

Hello from Donna Jonte, your Phillips at Home host. Thanks for spending time with me and works of art from The Phillips Collection, slowing down to look, think, wonder, and respond creatively. Let’s go home for the holidays with artist Charles Demuth!

Materials: coloring supplies (markers, color pencils, crayons), scissors, glue, printer

Charles Demuth, Red Chimneys, 1918, Watercolor and graphite pencil on medium-weight, medium-textured, off-white, wove paper, 10 1/8 x 14 in., The Phillips Collection, Acquired 1925

SKETCHING WITH CHARLES DEMUTH

Look carefully at this work of art by Charles Demuth. What do you notice? Do you see straight lines? Curved lines? What shapes do you see? What colors do you see? Why might Demuth have focused on the roofs of the houses?

Use a pencil or crayon (and your imagination) to extend this picture using the template and draw a house that you want to live in.  What will your house look like? Will your house look like something in your dreams? Will you use straight or wavy lines? What shapes might your doors and windows be? What might you add to the roof, the house, and the yard?

When you have finished drawing your house, add yourself to the picture. Where will you be?


ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1899, photograph by Ferdinand Demuth

Charles Demuth (American, 1883-1935) was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. When he was not traveling to New York City; Provincetown, Massachusetts; or Paris, he lived in his family home, which is now The Demuth Museum. Young Charles was inspired by the view from his windows. He liked the geometric shapes in the city’s skyline, especially the church steeples. So did his father, Ferdinand Demuth, an amateur photographer. Here is one of his father’s photos showing Lancaster’s architecture in 1899.

Duncan Phillips included Demuth’s work in his 1926 Exhibition of Paintings by Nine American Artists, which was an effort to make Washington aware of progressive trends in American art. The exhibition intrigued local critics. It included many American artists never before shown in the city who painted in a cubist-influenced style “based on systematized, arbitrary arrangement” of forms. In his catalogue essay, Phillips praised Demuth’s “austerity of ruled line combined with an enchanting quality of color,” and in his collection catalogue of the same year commented on Demuth’s “genius for design and consummate taste and tact.”


CONSTRUCT A HOUSE

Charles Demuth’s painting inspired us to sketch a 2-dimensional (flat) house. Now let’s create a 3-dimensional (sculptural) paper house using a template from the Design Museum, the National Building Museum, of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

Look at your house template. Imagine how your house will look when it is put together. Which part will be the front of the house and which will be the back? How will the tabs help hold the house together?

We will decorate the house before we cut and fold the template into a 3-dimensional form. Keeping the template flat, decorate your house. Use your colored pencils and crayons to add color and details.

Construct your house following the instructions. Then add embellishments like pom-poms, stickers, and tape. What else might you add to your house? Explore your own home for more decorations that will make your house look festive!

Use a variety of the templates to make a whole village!

Happy holidays from The Phillips Collection!