Horace Pippin’s The Barracks Heads to the Brandywine

Posted on April 24, 2015 by Experiment Station

Horace Pippin, The Barracks, 1945. Oil on canvas, 25 1/4 x 30 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, Acquired 1946

Postdoctoral Fellow Anne Monahan consulted on the development of Horace Pippin: The Way I See It, an upcoming exhibition on self-taught artist Horace Pippin (1888-1946) that opens April 25 at the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The first major exhibition of Pippin’s work in over 20 years, the exhibition brings together 65 of Pippin’s works from different stages of his career.

During her time at the Phillips, Dr. Monahan has researched Horace Pippin and unearthed new information about his family, his sources, and his relationship to the burgeoning market for his work in the 1940s. Her research focuses on his history paintings, his representations of African American labor and leisure, and new readings of a painting in the Phillips’s collection, The Barracks (1945).

The Barracks will be on view at the Brandywine through July 19 as part of the exhibition. Elizabeth Steele, Head of Conservation at the Phillips, cleaned the painting before it traveled for the show, restoring the dark colors to full effect by removing a layer of white film that had leached out of the dark pigments over time.

Eliza French, Manager of Center Initiatives, Center for the Study of Modern Art

ArtGrams: Giacometti’s Monumental Head

Posted on April 23, 2015 by Experiment Station

Via Instagrammer @jfg2003 “Nice one @giacometti.”

We’ve noticed that visitors are quite interested in Alberto Giacometti’s Monumental Head and have been snapping creative photos since it went back on view in our galleries a few months ago. In this month’s installment of ArtGrams (see the first and second installments from previous months), we’re highlighting some of our favorite shots, angles, and interactions with the sculpture.

Instagrammer @carofogg challenged Giacometti to a staring contest: “Staring contest! Quick! You and me! …..you win, you always doooo”

Instagrammer @plemeljr says: “Giacometti, ‘Monumental Head’ – very apt name”

Instagrammer @phia_p stages a playful pose

Via instagrammer @madfabriholic

Face-off, as outlined by Instagrammer @caemill: “1913 Kandinsky vs. 1960 Giacometti”

Man Ray’s Shakespearean Equations: Twelfth Night

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Experiment Station

Man Ray, Shakespearean Equation, Twelfth Night, 1948. Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 30 1/8 in. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1972. © Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY / ADAGP, Paris 2015. Photography by Lee Stalsworth

In contrast to other Shakespearean Equation paintings, which feature a single or a pair of mathematical models, Twelfth Night unites eight forms. Two additional “foreign” items—an ostrich egg and a phallic object—reference other Man Ray works. Like the love triangle and complex plot of the Shakespearean play evoked by the work’s title, this intricate gathering of many improbable objects suggests similarly complicated and overlapping relationships.