Finding a Match in Gjon Mili

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Pousttchi with Gjon Mili Ford Car

Intersections artist Bettina Pousttchi (right) with Phillips Collections Care Manager Laura Tighe (left)

Bettina Pousttchi stopped by earlier this month to consider works from the museum’s permanent collection to display with her own in her upcoming Intersections installation opening in June. Five of Pousttchi’s Double Monuments will be on view with a selection of the Phillips’s photographs, including the above image by Gjon Mili, Ford Car Being Driven through Deep Water at Ford Test Site, Detroit, MI (ca. 1948).

Raise/Raze at the Dupont Underground

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Detail of Raise/Raze, the winning project proposal for the Dupont Underground’s installation contest. Photo: Lauren Griffin

Walking down the steps past a metal door with a padlock to view Phillips partner Dupont Underground‘s first art installation, Raise/Raze, feels a bit delinquent. It was hard to temper my excitement at being in a space which at first glance, appears be forbidden. The tunnels still hold trolley tracks and street signs. There are artifacts of the years the space sat abandoned, including graffiti and dripping water. The original designs for the installation included covering the walls completely in a uniform white, but I appreciate seeing these reminders of the tunnel’s past. They underscore the perfect, manufactured luminescence of the re-purposed balls. The effect is the appearance of a pixelated, digital growth in an organic space. I overheard more than one comparison to Minecraft.

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Installation view of Raise/Raze. Photo: Amy Wike

More so than other submitted designs, Hou de Sousa‘s proposal truly transforms the material. In their original installation in The Beach, the balls were a mass that one could sink into and be surrounded by. They moved as a liquid, moving force. Here, in Raise/Raze, the balls function as a solid mass, capable of sustaining form and inspiring manipulation. Hou de Sousa takes the balls from a material that must be swum through and struggled against into a material to work with constructively.

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Installation view of Raise/Raze. Photo: Lauren Griffin

I also appreciate how there are pre-constructed areas to explore and create additions to. It can be difficult to be presented with a blank slate, and by providing three pre-made areas that include a maze, open space with constructed boulders, and stalactite towers, the space gives just enough structure for creative exploration. I look forward to seeing what each wave of visitors comes up with each day, and to see them documented on social media.

Lauren Griffin, Contemporary Curatorial Intern

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Installation view of Raise/Raze. Photo: Amy Wike

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Installation view of Raise/Raze. Photo: Lauren Griffin

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Installation view of Raise/Raze. Photo: Lauren Griffin

Kokoschka in Pencil and Paint

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Kokoschka Lotte with former MA sketch

(left) Sketch of Kokoschka’s Portrait of Lotte Franzos by Twitter follower @f0rTyLeGz (right) Oskar Kokoschka, Portrait of Lotte Franzos, 1909. Oil on canvas, 45 1/4 x 31 1/4 in. Acquired 1941. The Phillips Collection, Washington DC © 2015 Foundation Oskar Kokoschka / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ProLitteris, Zürich.

A former Phillips employee shared this sketch of Oskar Kokoschka’s Portrait of Lotte Franzos (1909) from his time at the museum during the 1960’s. Do you sketch in the galleries? We’d love to see your work!