Things Aren’t Always What They Seem

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Experiment Station

Photographs by Sharon Core currently on view at the Phillips

My very first experience in a museum was, as far as I can remember, intimidating. I over-distanced myself from Auguste Rodin’s exquisite bronze sculptures for fear that I would fail to resist the impulse to touch them and get myself into trouble.

I felt a similar impulse when I ran into Sharon Core’s series of works in a second floor gallery at the Phillips today. Although the experience wasn’t intimidating this time, the temptation to touch the work was as hard to resist. This time, it wasn’t a sculpture; yet as solid and life-like. The photographs’ three-dimensional quality and tangibility tricked my eyes into thinking that what I saw was a real object.

Sharon Core, Peaches and Blackberries, 2008. Chromogenic print, 13 1/2 x 17 1/2 x 1 3/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Gift of The Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, 2015

I had to stare at the works for a while to decide whether these were photos or paintings; their subject, composition, and painterly quality instantly reminded me of still life paintings from the 19th century. As speculated, Core was inspired by the compositions of 19th century American still life painter Raphaelle Peale. By meticulously rendering details and emphasizing texture, Core overcomes the limitations of photography and captures features that would have been hard to see even in real life. In fact, the highly contrasting lights, vibrant coloration, and the lustrous texture of the objects are all pictorial elements that could have only been achieved through the labor-intensive process of assembling the materials and arranging the setting.

Across the room hangs a row of still life paintings by post-Impressionist artists. One of them is Paul Cézanne’s Glass and Apples, which is rather muted in tone with no striking tactile appeal. With the emergence and development of photography in his time, Cézanne would have found no point in creating a photo-realistic representation; rather, he was more concerned with capturing the very essence of painting and conveying his own perception of the subject.

Ironically enough, Core’s vibrantly colored, highly-staged photographs that imitate the style of still life painters predating Cézanne, hang right across from his rather simple composition.

As FotoWeek is approaching, come visit the Phillips and take a look into Core’s work that jumps across the boundary between painting and photography. What about Core’s prints is similar to Cézanne’s painting? What’s different?

Summer Park, Marketing & Communications Intern

5 Disgruntled Characters from the Collection

Posted on July 28, 2016 by Experiment Station

Not every sitter is excited to be painted. The Phillips owns a wide range of portraits, and within them, all manner of expressions. Here are five less-than-enthused subjects from the museum’s permanent collection.

1. Chaim Soutine’s Woman in Profile is #NotImpressed.

2. Paul Klee, The Witch with the Comb. The fierce brows say it all.

Paul Klee, The Witch with the Comb, 1922. Lithograph, 20 7/8 in x 16 3/4 in x 1 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Gift of B. J. and Carol Cutler, 2006; © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, NY

3. Sensing some side-eye from Joseph Solman’s Portrait in Yellow and Blue.

Joseph Solman, Portrait in Yellow and Blue, not dated, Oil on canvas 20 x 16 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1954

4) Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot’s Portrait of a Woman unsuccessfully feigning interest.

Unsuccessfully feigning interest. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Portrait of a Woman, 1870, Oil on canvas, 22 7/8 in x 19 in x 1 5/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1922

5. Thomas Eakins, Miss Amelia Van Buren. Read what visitors told us she’s thinking in these earlier blog posts.

Thomas Eakins, Miss Amelia Van Buren, ca. 1891. Oil on canvas, 45 x 32 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1927

To end on a happy note: channel this woman from Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Cry Laughing!

Sam Taylor-Johnson, Cry Laughing, 1997. 8 C-type prints on aluminum, each print: 16 x 12 in. The Phillips Collection. Gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection, Washington, DC, 2011

Spotlight on Intersections@5: Linn Meyers

Posted on October 1, 2015 by Experiment Station

The Phillips celebrates the fifth anniversary of its Intersections contemporary art series with Intersections@5, an exhibition comprising work by 20 of the participating artists. In this blog series, each artist writes about his or her work on view.

Linn Meyers, Untitled, 2014. Gift of Lucinda and Carlos Garcia

The unmediated directness of making a drawing is the result of a line being an extension of the hand and the body. The line is universal.

At the Time Being was a site-specific wall drawing made in response to Van Gogh’s The Road Menders. I chose Van Gogh’s work as a starting point because the method that the artist used to apply paint to his canvases shares some of the same qualities of a drawing.

Twenty-five years ago, I began my career as a painter. Over time I became enamored with the distilled qualities of drawing, and eventually drawing became my primary focus.

While working on the Intersections project in 2010, however, I found that I was not only drawing on the wall, but also using a paintbrush to enhance the image. That return to painting as a mode of expression during the project at the Phillips has stuck with me, and Untitled, 2014 is evidence of that. The piece blends drawing and painting; it puts the two modes of expression on equal footing. The lines in Untitled, 2014 have a calligraphic quality that was achieved with a paintbrush; however, the act of making a line is, in and of itself, an act of drawing.

Linn Meyers