The “Eyes” Have It

Posted on July 7, 2015 by Experiment Station

Clockwise from top left: Stewart Eisenhart from Washington, DC; Yeonsin Ra from Rolla, MO; Christina Rago from MD; and Sheryl St. Michel from Hyattsville, MD.

Since American Moments: Photography from The Phillips Collection opened just a few weeks ago, we have already received almost 500 responses to our Make Your Own Portrait in-gallery interactive. The exhibition’s emphasis on vision can be seen in these highlighted submissions, all of which take the human eye as their subject. Be on the lookout for more eye-catching portraits to come!

Deconstructing Lawrence’s Struggle Series: Panel 17

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Experiment Station

This spring, former Phillips curator Beth Turner taught an undergraduate practicum at the University of Virginia focusing on Jacob Lawrence’s Struggle series. In this multi-part blog series, responses from Turner’s students in reference to individual works from the series will be posted each week.

Jacob Lawrence, Struggle … From the History of the American People, no. 17: I shall hazard much and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of this interview -Hamilton Before His Duel With Burr, 1804, 1956. Egg tempera on hardboard, 16 x 12 in. Private Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross. © 2015 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

I shall hazard much and can possibly gain nothing by the issue of this interview…–Hamilton before his duel with Burr, 1804

This specific piece, which depicts the infamous duel and subsequent death of Alexander Hamilton in 1804, departs from many of the other panels of the series in its stylistic qualities. The violence in the image is subtle, but salient. The composition guides the eyes through diagonals to see the splash of red, resulting from Hamilton’s injury.

Here Lawrence communicates the universal struggle that is the Civil Rights Movement through a moment of sacrifice strikingly significant to the American people. Like the participants of the Civil Rights Movement, Hamilton had everything to lose, including his life, but he felt it his moral duty to fight. This story aptly conveys the human condition that Lawrence always sought to portray. The struggle is long and bitter, but there is an innate force, driving people to continue on with the hopes of a better life. For Hamilton, a better life was one in which his honor was intact. For those struggling in the Civil Rights Movement at the time, that life included equality.

Alexis Baker

Spotlight on Intersections@5: A. Balasubramaniam

Posted on July 2, 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.

A. Balasubramaniam, Hold Nothing, 2012. Cast from artist’s body, fiberglass and acrylic, 42 x 24 x 7 in. Purchase, The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions, 2014

Hold Nothing is an effort to bring form to the formless—to realize the potential of the unseen. It is a cast from my own hands, the distance between the two edges of the work the actual distance from my body’s left and right outstretched arms. Skin, the outer layer of the body, is also revealed as an edge where the individual self ends and everything else begins. In this work, the inside (of my hands) becomes the outside (of the work). Our respect and awareness for material reality is often more than that for the non-material or the non-visible; we usually think of “nothing” as negative. I am attempting here to show that even nothing is something—even nothing has its own unique form. The result is Hold Nothing.

A. Balasubramaniam