Space Modulators

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Experiment Station

(Left) Joyce Tsai, Photo: Joshua Navarro. (Right) László Moholy-Nagy, B-10 Space Modulator, 1942. Oil on incised and molded Plexiglas, mounted with chromium clamps on painted plywood, Plexiglas: 17 3/4 × 12 inches (45.1 × 30.5 cm). Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection 47.1063 © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn.

Joyce Tsai will be giving a talk, “Modulating Modernism“, tonight at 6:30 at our Center for the Study of Modern Art.

László Moholy-Nagy’s Space Modulators (a great example at the Guggenheim, right), executed late in his career, are beautiful, but slightly odd painting/sculpture hybrids made in clear plastic. I came across them while I was researching his oeuvre for my book, Painting after Photography, and was drawn to them because they look so radically different from the photography and rigorous, geometrical abstract painting he made at the Bauhaus. These late works on plastic are biomorphic, replete with undulating curves and are difficult to categorize for all sorts of reason. They’re materially fragile, prone to damage, and age unpredictably. The more I worked on these objects, the more I began to see how important they were to the artist, how much they sought to synthesize his life’s work.

Joyce Tsai, 2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Study of Modern Art and the George Washington University

Dear Diary…

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Experiment Station

Photo: Sarah Osborne Bender

Head Librarian Karen Schneider and Chief Preparator Shelly Wischhusen install the new Reading Room materials. This selection focuses on Duncan Phillips’s journals, including accounts of his travels, plans for his museum, and perspectives on his ever-changing and growing collection.

Personal Reflections on the Wax Room: Part 1

Posted on March 19, 2014 by Experiment Station

In celebration of the Laib Wax Room‘s first anniversary as a permanent installation at The Phillips Collection, Membership Associate and Marketing & Communications Intern Rhiannon Newman, who was one of four assistants in the preparation and installation, describes her experience in a four part series.

Photos: Rhiannon Newman

The scent of the wax permeates this room. It penetrates every pore—you could sweat the smell of beeswax. It absorbs into the follicles of your hair. It embeds deep into your clothes and when you bathe, it hangs like a thick fog in your shower. The smell of wax invades your every waking hour until… you stop smelling it altogether.

I stare irritably at the stranger in the grocery store who has stepped into my personal space. He inhaled deeply, and my tense posture sent him out of the cereal aisle and towards the fresh produce. A moment later I belatedly realize that his sniff was more inquisitive than perverted. I glance down at the beeswax spattered leggings I’m wearing and sheepishly move towards the check out.

Rhiannon Newman, Membership Associate and Marketing & Communications Intern