The Phillips Collects: Zoë Charlton

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Experiment Station

On October 24, the Phillips unveiled its latest acquisition selected by the Contemporaries Steering Committee: Zoë Charlton’s The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued, 2018.

Zoë Charlton (b. 1973, Tallahassee, Florida) is best known for her large-scale drawings of nudes as well as collages that merge diverse figures with phantasmagoric landscapes. Combining cut-outs from books and magazines, decorative stickers of trees, leaves, clouds, and birds, with drawings from life, she creates poignant images that blend elements of high and low culture and confront the viewer with their scale, directness, and bold expression. The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued is part of the artist’s Migration series produced during her residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, Texas, which draws from Charlton’s memories of her grandmother’s homestead in Florida. Here, lush vegetation grows out of a female body, suggesting both the beauty and the weight of the world.

Zoë Charlton with her work The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued (2018) at the unveiling. Photo: Ann Lipscombe

Detail of The Country A Wilderness Unsubdued (2018)

The artwork is on view along the Goh Annex stairwell, giving visitors various perspectives along the stairs.

Unpacking and installing the artwork

Charlton received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been featured in the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw, Poland, and other museums. Charlton lives in Baltimore and is Associate Professor of Art at American University in Washington, DC.

The artist was on site for the installation

Installation of the artwork

The Contemporaries Steering Committee—under the guidance of Phillips Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenović and Vradenburg Director and CEO Dorothy Kosinski—selected the work by Zoë Charlton for the Phillips’s collection. The Contemporaries Acquisition Fund—active from 1996 to 2008 and recently reinstated—closely involves young professionals in the life and philanthropic efforts of the Phillips.

Contemporaries Steering Committee Member Juliana Biondo explains why the committee was drawn to the piece: “Zoë Charlton’s piece has an immediately striking dynamism that explodes in both directions as it moves upward. The multiplicity of foliage and animals—meticulously yet spontaneously placed—create a sense of ever-growing abundance. Combined with the surrealism of the human torso, the rich visual field triggers a whole host of questions about growth and our relationship to the natural.”

For more information about the Contemporaries, visit PhillipsCollection.org/contemporaries or contact membership@phillipscollection.org.

Collective Collage Inspired by Braque

Posted on August 29, 2013 by Experiment Station

Participants in a recent art workshop enjoyed a brief discussion about Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928-1945 and lesson in cubist composition led by artists Ken Kewley and Jill Phillips. Each individual created a personal cubist collage and contributed to a group composition inspired by forms in Braque’s works.

In the workshop, participants study reproductions of Braque’s paintings and cut and paste their own abstract shapes onto small squares. Photos: Caitlin Brague

To practice the layered effect seen in cubist works, participants worked in small teams to make a group composition. Each person drew an abstract form onto transparency paper and layered it with another. After some deliberation, a final composition was agreed upon and scanned into a single image. Photos: Caitlin Brague

One participant absorbed in her work, while another displays her masterpiece! Photos: Caitlin Brague

Caitlin Brague, Graduate Intern for Programs and Lectures

Pollock Meets Japanese Poetry in Collage

Posted on April 18, 2013 by Karen Schneider

Jackson Pollock, Collage and Oil, c. 1951, oil, ink, gouache and paper collage on canvas; overall: 50 in x 35 in; 127 cm x 88.9 cm. Acquired 1958. The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

Jackson Pollock began making collages in 1943 at the invitation of Peggy Guggenheim, who organized an international Exhibition of Collage at her gallery Art of This Century. The Phillips’s Collage and Oil, executed in 1951, is probably one of Pollock’s last collages.

According to Head of Conservation Elizabeth Steele, Pollock placed torn pieces of Japanese paper and Western paper that he had first painted with ink or black paint and a pink ochre gouache on top of canvas in layers of red earth, pink, and black. After gluing the torn paper sections onto the painted canvas, Pollock splattered the entire composition with an Indian yellow paint and white gouache.

Collages, or pictures assembled from a variety of materials, have an ancient history. In the 12th century, Japanese calligraphers copied poems on sheets of paper that were composed of irregularly shaped pieces of delicately tinted papers. Tiny flowers, birds, and stars made from gold and silver paper were sprinkled over the composition. When the torn or cut edges of the papers were brushed with ink, their wavy contours represented mountains, rivers, or clouds. The calligrapher selected from such papers the one most appropriate to the spirit of a particular poem, which he then wrote out in an elegant hand.

Example of 12th-century Japanese calligraphy on collage paper.