Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful Tour Blueprint

through July 20, 2008

Introduction
Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful is primarily an exhibition of Wright’s interior, furniture, and textile designs, as well as some of his drawings of architectural plans and elevations, custom and production furniture, and interior views of his houses. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Virginia Terry Boyd, Professor of Design Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Brooks Pfieffer, Director of the Frank Lloyd Wright Archives was also deeply involved in the project. The exhibition is circulated by International Arts & Artists, and comes to the NMA by way of the Naples Museum of Art (Florida), Boise Art Museum (Idaho), Columbia Museum of Art (South Carolina), and the Philbrook Museum of Art (Oklahoma), among others.

Among other objects in the exhibition, you’ll find chairs, lamps, tables, drawings, screens, windows, and textiles spanning a remarkably long architectural career of seventy + years, most of which are couched in the idea of the House Beautiful--a concept about architecture and, more importantly, about how to live—that was central to Wright’s work, although he did not coin the phrase. Its philosophical roots lay in nineteenth-century housing and social reform in an era of tenements and slums in rapidly industrializing cities following the onslaught of the Industrial Revolution. The basic idea, foundational to the aesthetic philosophy of John Ruskin and William Morris’s Arts and Crafts Movement, was that the “quality of life could be improved by reshaping the material physical environment”—that the nature of the environment had a profound effect on the individual’s social, moral, and cultural values.

This exhibition is presented as part of the NMA’s Art + Environment exhibition series, an initiative that brings community, artists, and scholars together to explore the interactions between people and their environments.

Wall Texts
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
The phrase “House Beautiful” came into use at the end of the nineteenth century as part of a design and social reform movement. The philosophy reflected a belief that quality of life could be improved through the design of material environments—from cities to houses to table settings. With respect to the home, “House Beautiful” implied not simply artistic goals, but a broader moral connotation that the home was a source of cultural and ethical values, a place where individuals became productive citizens contributing to the betterment of a democratic society.

Throughout his life, Frank Lloyd Wright was guided by a central motivating force: that architecture was about creating a way to live. He once said, “A building is not just a place to be. It is a way to be.” Wright’s residential architecture, in particular, was the laboratory for realizing—in form—a uniquely American “way to be,” which, over time, would become a “lifestyle.”

This exhibition presents three ways in which Wright translated his ideas about how to live into the design of houses. First, he introduced a new approach to the allocation of space, emphasizing a main living area. Second, he developed a style to express the modern era. Last, he worked to make his ideas and designs available to average Americans. Whether creating tables or textiles, Frank Lloyd Wright considered it his mission to provide a “House Beautiful” for every American.

A MODERN HOUSE FOR AMERICA
Frank Lloyd Wright believed that Americans deserved a unique style of architecture, not one based on European precedents. He felt that design should reflect individual freedom and the increasingly informal, modern American lifestyle of the early twentieth century. Consistent with America’s vision of a democratic society, Wright imagined a house that liberated, rather than constrained, those who lived in it.

Wright proposed innovations such as removing attics and basements, and reducing the size of less frequently used rooms in order to focus and expand the common living area of the home. This meant removing walls deemed unnecessary in order to open up interior spaces—thereby creating one, continuous room that served multiple functions and changed throughout the course of the day and life of the family. Floor-to-ceiling walls of glass and exterior terracing diminished the visual and physical barriers between interior space and the surrounding landscape. These innovative changes created a house with a single, expansive “space for living.”

AN ORGANIC APPROACH
Creating a “House Beautiful” required establishing an underlying unity and order in the material environment. Frank Lloyd Wright described this sense of harmony as an organic approach to the design and use of houses. He gave physical form to this idea by emphasizing the inherent character of materials—their linear quality, texture, and natural patterns. Wright’s notion of organic ornamentation did not simply adapt natural images; rather, it expressed his sense of the relationship between the fundamental structure and visual appearance of forms in nature.

All of Wright’s work—from drawings to completed buildings to furnishings—shows a consistent visual character based on ruler-straight lines that move the eye through the object or space. Resulting patterns convey the Modern world through abstract geometric motifs and compositions. Regardless of scale, the consistency of Wright’s approach assured that a single, integrated vision governed the entire project.

A HOUSE FOR EVERYONE
Frank Lloyd Wright is most well-known for his custom-designed houses for wealthy or adventurous clients. Yet throughout his career he also remained committed to designing housing for the average person of “Usonia”—the term he used for the United States. Wright experimented with several ways to extend his ideas about organic architecture to mass audiences; the Usonian house was one such attempt. He developed plans and a construction process that, ideally, clients could implement themselves. Furthermore, he introduced and promoted his ideas through the popular press, built exhibition houses, and designed manufactured, prefabricated homes. Wright also understood that the closest most people would come to obtaining an organic “House Beautiful” was by outfitting an existing home with his furniture, textiles, wallpapers, carpets, and paints. All such products were coordinated so that a consumer could customize a space according to Wright’s principles for creating a unified, organic whole.

PROMOTION IN POPULAR MEDIA
Like all accomplished architects, Frank Lloyd Wright knew that success was as much dependent upon vigorous promotion of his work as it was on the work itself. To firmly establish his approach to residential architecture, Wright needed to address potential clients using a means of communication with which they were familiar.

The popular press was one avenue Wright used to deliver his products to a mass audience. In the early twentieth century, women’s and lifestyle magazines such as Ladies’ Home Journal, House Beautiful and Life were widely read. They often included articles describing current issues of the day that affected the middle class—such as trends in home design. Frank Lloyd Wright entered numerous architectural design competitions sponsored by these magazines, and his ideas were frequently featured in their pages.

OPPORTUNITIES TO EXPERIENCE A HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
Every house that Frank Lloyd Wright built was a way to publicize his work. However, only a limited number of people had access to these private homes. Therefore, Wright used a range of methods to expose larger numbers of people to his principles of organic architecture. One approach was to create prefabricated structures—such as the American System-Built Houses—intended to reduce the cost of expensive skilled labor, yet control the quality of the design and construction. Another means of disseminating his ideas was the production of a series of exhibition houses that provided access to hundreds of visitors. Although temporary, these houses made it possible for people to imagine the experience of living in a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

TEXTILES AND WALLPAPERS BY F. SCHUMACHER AND COMPANY
In 1954, Frank Lloyd Wright submitted a number of textile and wallpaper design ideas to F. Schumacher and Company, a production firm that had previous experience collaborating with designers. Several of Wright’s ideas were selected and adapted for production—supplemented by additional colors and designs that filled out the product line. Over time the line evolved, with the last new fabrics added in 1960 and all of the products gradually phasing out by 1972. In 1986, the company introduced a second line called “The Frank Lloyd Wright Collection,” which remains in production today.

Fabrics were important to Wright’s vision of a “House Beautiful.” When large-scale textiles were hung to cover entire walls, their patterns created an illusion of “opening up” the confining walls in the room. The complex designs and fabric colors also conveyed the visual richness of Wright’s custom houses, echoing the lush materials, light screens, and the unique carpets used in these structures.

FURNITURE BY HERITAGE-HENREDON
Frank Lloyd Wright recognized that not all people could build their own homes, so he designed “organic ornaments” to improve already-existing houses. These objects represented a fundamental change in the way Wright approached furnishings: rather than serve as integral components of a custom-designed home, these mass-produced pieces were freestanding objects that created an organic space on their own. Wright submitted designs for three furniture lines to the Heritage-Henredon company, elements of which were integrated into the company’s final “Taliesin Line.” This group of 66 pieces included a dining set, side tables, chairs, upholstered seats, and modular cabinets. The modular pieces, a new idea at the time, gave Wright the means to develop standardized furnishings that could be personalized through unique configurations for different situations.

Lackluster sales of this furniture might have been due, in part, to the uniqueness of the products at the time. Additionally, the modular pieces required considerable skill to combine effectively, and the individual objects were virtually impossible to coordinate with other furnishings. Nonetheless, these products foreshadowed the modular furniture systems that were still to come.

Orientation
You’ll find the exhibition installed in the third floor Feature Gallery South. The exhibition is roughly chronological in its layout, and it invites you to meander through the gallery, looking at the evolution of Wright’s work over the course of his remarkable seventy-year career as an architect and designer. A clear delineation occurs midway through the exhibition that represents a shift in Wright’s work—one in which he moved away from more formal, expensive, and individually unique designs of everything from landscapes to tableware, and towards well-designed objects for production on a much wider, and therefore affordable, scale.

Wright Houses
Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, Oak Park, Illinois (1889-1898)
Edward C. Waller House, River Forest, Illinois (1899)
B. Harley Bradley House, Kankakee, Illinois (1900)
Hillside Home School, Spring Green, Wisconsin (1902)
Susan Lawrence Dana House, Springfield, Illinois (1902)
Edward C. Waller House, River Forest, Wisconsin (1902)
Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York (1905)
William R. Heath House, Buffalo, New York (1905)
C. Thaxter Shaw House, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (1906)
J. Kibben Ingalls House, River Forest, Illinois (1908)
Frederick Robie House, Chicago, Illinois (1909)
Taliesin I, Spring Green, Wisconsin (1911-1914)
Avery Coonley Kindergarten, Riverside, Illinois (1912)
Taliesin II, Spring Green, Wisconsin (1915-1925)
Henry Allen House, Wichita, Kansas (1915)
Imperial Hotel, Tokyo, Japan (1915)
Mabel & Charles Ennis House, Los Angeles, California (1923)
Taliesin III, Spring Green, Wisconsin (1925-1937)
Broadacre City (unrealized, 1935)
Taliesin West, Scottsdale, Arizona (1937-1950s)
Lloyd Lewis House, Libertyville, Illinois (1939)
Bernard Schwartz House, Two Rivers, Wisconsin (1939)
David Wright House, Phoenix, Arizona (1950)
Guggenheim Museum, New York City, New York (1953)

Vocabulary
Perspective Drawing – a drawing that uses one- or two points on a line to convey the illusion of three dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface
Plan – a “bird’s eye” view of the layout of a house; a map of the rooms of a house as seen from above
Section – a “cutaway” or “dollhouse” view of the layout of a house; a map of a house plan illustrating the view through the walls at how space is organized.
Elevation – an architectural drawing of a building that depicts an exterior view of the side of the structure, e.g., the north elevation or the southeast elevation.

Tour Framework

• Ask guests to look closely at the title wall of the exhibition, and to describe what kind of ideas, feelings, or senses of Frank Lloyd Wright’s work it conveys. Craftsmanship? Japanese influences? Warmth? What else? Why? What comes to mind when you think “Frank Lloyd Wright”? Why?

• Explain that the House Beautiful is a concept with historical roots in the nineteenth century that strongly influenced Wright’s design philosophy over most of his life. Following the rapid industrialization and mechanization of large cities around the western world in the nineteenth century, large numbers of poor, working, and middle class people were more or less forced to live in squalid conditions in tenement projects and slums. First in England, and later in the U.S., opposition to these living conditions increased as a result of treatises by Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin. As Boyd explains: “For them the improvement of the aesthetic and cultural milieu was an essential part of broader social reform. Ruskin discussed the relation between architecture and the moral good, even suggesting that particular architectural features such as hearths, overhanging roofs and steep gables represented Christian moral values such as trust and devotion. As leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement, William Morris emphasized a relationship between the aesthetic environment and an individual’s quality of life; a supportive environment could inspire the initiative and educational activity necessary to achieve a better life.” (41)
  

• Explain to guests that there are many ways to understand the historical trajectory of Wright’s development as a designer, but that in many ways, it can best be understood by the eras of his architectural designs for his own family’s life: Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio in Oak Park, Illinois (1889-1909); Taliesin I (1911-1914); Taliesin II (1915-1925); Talisein III (1925-1937+); and Taliesin West (1937-1959). Be sure to emphasize, however, that this is not an exhibition about his architecture, per se, but an exhibition about his concept for the house beautiful.

• Point guests’ attention to the window from the Darwin D. Martin House (Buffalo, NY: 1905) mounted in the title wall. Explain that early in his career, during the Oak Park era, Wright was learning architecture from two mentors, and designing homes that were moving out of the staid Victorian traditions of the time. This window illustrates Wright’s lifelong interest in the patterns underlying nature, and the quality of the colored and leaded glass illustrates Wright’s concern for craftsmanship. Additionally, the window shows Wright’s interest in Universal design, as he designed not only the home’s structure, but also its windows.

• Invite guests to look at the Dining and Living Area drawings of the C. Thaxter Shaw House (Montreal, Quebec: 1906).

• Explain that the drawings are interior architectural views of the Shaw House that convey the illusion of three dimensions through the use of two-point perspective. This common drawing style allows architects to help clients understand their plans for a given space.

• Invite guests to examine the group of furniture objects, including two pieces from the Oak Park, Illinois, Frank Lloyd Wright home and studio, and one each from the Avery Coonley Kindergarten and Hillside Home School.

• Ask guests to describe the shapes, materials, and styles of the chairs. What kinds of shapes and forms does Wright use to craft the chairs? Do these chairs seem more formal or more informal? Why?

• Explain that Wright’s work evolved throughout his career. His early home and furniture designs were not traditional—they often raised eyebrows, actually—but to our eyes today they do seem much more “traditional.” Look closely at the Frank Lloyd Wright Studio Side Chair (Oak Park, IL.: 1895), for example. Yet it also conveys some of his revolutionary ideas in its form: he was most famous for removing walls from the interior spaces of homes, and instead relying on furniture to help convey a sense of space. He often used high back chairs to do this. So, while this might be a very traditional-looking chair, it also represents the seed of revolutionary thoughts by a young architect.

• Ask guests to look at the Enclosed Chair from the FLW Studio on the higher pedestal nearby (Oak Park, IL.:1895). If the chair were a purely three-dimensional form, what would it be? Essentially, the enclosed chair is an experiment in reductive sculpture. What has he removed from the cube to create this chair?

• Ask guests how many of them have or, more importantly, use a formal dining room in their own homes. How about a library? The nearby Edward C. Waller House Library Table and Susan Lawrence Dana House Hanging Lamp (1902) reflect a time of a still-very-traditional turn of the century. The library table was designed for a very specified use in a very specified room—before the advent of more common spaces in his house designs. Likewise, the lamp was designed for a formal dining room in the Dana House, which Wright moved away from after the 1930s.
  

• Point guests’ attention to the Japanese Print Table nearby. Here again we see a piece from early in Wright’s career (1898) that represents a custom design, a formal purpose (the display of a single Japanese print at a time), and clients of means. And yet the table also indicates some of FLW’s interest in modularity: the table has hinges and can be completely closed for storage, taking up a fraction of the space it does when open.
  

• Explain that Wright’s nearby designs for side and coffee tables (1943) and for the David Wright House armchair (1950) illustrate some of the shifts in culture that FLW used his design savvy to meet. The tables and armchair are much less formal, much simpler, and they reflect a significant shift in the way people were living their lives from just two or three decades before. The small tables could be moved and grouped for the user’s needs, and even the fact of the upholstery on the David Wright chair suggests a less formal sitting area than was customary in the early part of FLW’s career.

• Explain to guests that the J. Kibben Ingalls House light screen mounted in the nearby wall (River Forest, IL.: 1908) begins to illustrate some of the concerns that would preoccupy FLW for the remainder of his career: how to blur the boundaries between inside and out, and how to make a home’s design organic, of its place, not on its place. Note the details of small pieces of colored glass in the design, and the strictly geometric and quite linear components of this particular design.

• Ask guests to consider again FLW’s sculptural and geometric design work by looking at the Taliesin Barrel Chair (1936). Like the earlier Enclosed Chair, the Taliesin Barrel Chair is an experiment in reductive, geometric design: a cylinder that has been cut away by the designer’s hand to reveal a more beautiful form.

• Explain to guests that one of the great tragedies of our American architectural heritage is that many of FLW’s buildings have been demolished, both here at home, and abroad. The silver tureen on display was a design for the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, Japan (1915). Sadly, like others of FLW’s designs, the Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1968--this after it had survived the 1923 Tokyo earthquake when not much else did. Note the specific and formal use of the tureen, and the geometric decoration in the handles.

• Explain to guests the basic principle of universal design. When he could, FLW designed not only the plans, sections, and elevations of his houses, but also the ways in which the houses fit into the landscape, all the way down to the linens on the tables, the windows in the walls, the carpets on the floor, and the utensils on the counter—epitomizing the idea of custom home design. Nearby, several windows and light screens indicate FLW’s continued interest in breaking down the barriers between inside and outside, and in the geometry of design. The Francis W. Little House (Deep Haven, MN.: 1912) is very much in a lush setting, and FLW wanted to emphasize this with the windows. The nearby Avery Coonley Kindergarten windows (Riverside, IL.: 1912) illustrate FLW’s interest in another geometry—that of the circle. In his later work FLW created designs based on a single geometric shape that became the underlying design principle for the whole project—the David Wright House, like the Guggenheim Museum, was based on the circle, for example.
  

• Explain that the B. Harley Bradley House Dining Chair (Kankakee, IL.: 1900) reiterates FLW’s interest in furniture-as-architecture. The high back of these chairs at a formal dining table within a large, open Wright-designed space helped to create a sense of a room-within-a-room in his design for the home. The open floor plans that he favored left large amounts of open space; the design of the chairs helped to create the feeling of a smaller space around the group of seated diners.

• Explain that the designs for the Frederick Robie House (Chicago, IL.: 1908) Wall Sconce and Chest of Drawers, along with the William R. Heath House (Buffalo, NY.: 1905) Hanging Lamp nearby are again examples of fine, hand-crafted, custom-made pieces for the well-to-do clients who commissioned FLW to design their homes. The pieces are made from high quality quarter-sawn solid oak; in comparison, some of the furniture around the corner is made with plywood—a new material in the 1930s—and FLW begins to experiment with furniture designs that met the changing needs of contemporary American families, e.g., moveable coffee tables functioning as alternative dining tables for the increasingly informal lifestyles of Americans at mid-century.

• Explain that Taliesin, FLW’s cherished home and studio in Spring Green, Wisconsin, burned almost entirely to the ground on two different occasions. Taliesien I (1911-1914) was lit afire by a disgruntled employee, who killed FLW’s mistress and four others. Taliesin II (1915-1925) caught fire in a 1925 lightning storm, and burned the house, but not FLW’s studio. He began work on the third iteration of Taliesin “III” in 1925, for which he created the nearby designs for the Taliesin III Lamp (1949) and Low-Back Music Chair (1943). Wright began construction on Taliesin West (Scottsdale, AZ.) in 1937.

• Explain to guests that these pieces allowed FLW to experiment with simpler, more modular, and more affordable designs for Americans, especially following World War II.

• Explain that as a result of the strong influence of the social reform tendencies of the Arts and Crafts Movement, FLW always believed in the democracy of design—the idea that everyone deserved good design, a well-built and well-designed home, and that such environments had a profound impact on the strength and qualities of peoples’ character. However, this was at odds with his chosen career path, as only the wealthy, generally, could afford architecturally unique homes or furniture. As FLW grew older and more well-established, he began to design for the middle and working classes, in addition to his wealthier clients.
  

• Ask guests to look at the Bernard Schwartz House (Two Rivers, WI.: 1939). How is it different from some of the other windows or screens they have seen in the exhibition?

• Explain that, as plywood was invented and becoming widely used, FLW used it to frame his windows, making the patterns in his screens not with expensive lead, but with punctuated holes cut into the plywood. His use of clear and translucent glass as opposed to colored glass made them more affordable as well.

• Encourage guests to look closely at the Heritage-Henredon Taliesin Line drawings of furniture on the west (curved) wall of the gallery, and at the Scott Radio Cabinet Project drawing (1941).

• Ask guests what they think the drawings might illustrate about Americans’ changing needs for furniture in the middle of the twentieth century.

• Explain that the rapid technological changes in America, which included the advent of in-home radios and then television sets, required new furniture designs, and increasingly informal lifestyles added to the need for revolutionary new designs, of which FLW’s of the 1940s are examples.

• Encourage guests to note the draftsmanship of the drawings in comparison to the sketchier drawings of the figures and forms with which he was experimenting.

• Encourage guests to look closely at the images of FLW’s carpet designs for the David Wright House (Phoenix, AZ.: 1950) and for the Gillin House (1950).

• Explain that FLW’s overall designs for these two projects began with one primary geometric shape: the circle and the triangle, respectively. Every component of the design of each structure was couched in the principles of the shape. For example, the circular carpet pattern echoed the forms of the David Wright House, which was circular in plan, and which shares traits with the much larger design of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, which was constructed just three years later.
  

• Explain that, beginning in the 1950s, FLW began to design furniture, textiles, and even pre-fabricated “System-Built” houses that could be mass-produced and made widely available to a much larger audience.

• Explain that FLW, like many talented artists and architects, was an inveterate self-promoter. It was said that “he could smell a potential client” at some distance, and he worked very hard to promote his design work by entering competitions hosted by such popular magazines of the day as House Beautiful and Ladies’ Home Journal. This was also how word about his Usonian and System-Built houses could be promoted to millions of people.

• Explain that commissions from the F. Schumacher Co., for example, led FLW to design a variety of textile designs—some less expensive printed cotton and linen, for example, and some more expensive woven boucle damask and silk fabrics as well.

• Explain that while FLW was working to plan the Guggenheim in New York, FLW constructed a model home of his System-Built Usonian house on the very site where the Guggenheim now stands, so that a wide audience could see what he was designing “for the masses.”

• Explain that Usonian was the name FLW gave to the houses he designed with the hopes of providing more affordable, yet still-well-designed, housing to a large portion of Americans. It was an abbreviation of what he thought the country ought to be called—the United States of North America.

• Ask guests if they think well-designed objects are important to them. Why? Would they be more important if they were more affordable?

Conclusion
Frank Lloyd Wright and the House Beautiful will, we hope, lead people to understand a number of things. First, that FLW had an extraordinarily wide reach as a designer and architect across seven decades of the twentieth century. Second, that the importance that FLW placed on design for everyone, not just the wealthy, is part of the design history of the U.S., which is often overlooked. Third, that companies like Target, which tout their affordable, well-designed objects for everyday use are not the first to do so. Fourth, that FLW was in many ways a visionary practitioner of architecture and design, predicting by half a century some of the conversations taking place to day about the need for affordable, beautiful, well-designed, and well-constructed housing. And perhaps most importantly, that FLW, one of the most important architects of the twentieth century, was a person concerned with not only the buildings in which we live and how they should fit in and not on the landscape, but how to live well within their walls.

Chuck Forsman

Feather River, 1992
Oil on panel
Collection of the NMA, Gift of Volunteers in Art

Feather River, a frequently exhibited piece in the Sierra Nevada | Great Basin Collection, seems to be a favorite of museum visitors. Perhaps it is the unique way that Forsman has painted the river in golden colors with contrasting grey rocks, or the way he has allowed the composition to “spill over” and become part of the frame of the painting.

Chuck Forsman was born in Nampa, Idaho, in 1944, and received his BA and his MFA in 1971 at the University of California. He has studied at Pasadena College and at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. He has had more than forty solo exhibitions since 1971, and his work is in the permanent collections of many museums throughout the western United States as well as New York. His most well known project is Arrested Rivers (1994), which focused on the subject of dams and water control in the west. Our painting, Feather River, is a part of that project; it depicts the Feather River Dam, built in 1961. The wall text notes that local Native American tribes criticized the dam project because the proposed spillway would submerge a number of pre-historic Maidu burial sites.

Forsman has also done a book of photography, Western Rider, published in 2004. Based in the Denver, Colorado area, Forsman is Professor of Fine Arts and Painting at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Research note prepared by Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley.

Albert Sheldon Pennoyer

Bucking Snow in the Sierras
c. 1940’s
Oil on canvas
Collection of the NMA, Gift of Ella Savitt

Born in Oakland, California in 1888, Albert Sheldon Pennoyer was raised in nearby Berkeley, where he studied at the University of California for a year, before moving to Paris to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. There he realized that his true interest lay in painting. He gave up his studies and returned to the U.S. when WWI began. He had homes on the East Coast in New York City and Litchfield, Connecticut, but spent almost equal time in California. He had a small studio cabin at his brother’s home at Lake Tahoe, and ventured forth from there to explore the Sierra, Virginia City, and Pyramid Lake. He is especially well known for his winter scenes, as well as his railroad images. He was the author/illustrator of two books, This Was California (1938), and Locomotives in our Lives (1954). He was equally proficient in oils, gouache, and pastels. Pennoyer died in an automobile accident in Madrid in 1957.

The NMA’s painting, Bucking Snow in the Sierras, shows steam engines clearing snow from the tracks near Donner Pass. More recently trains have been equipped with rotary plows that shoot the snow off to the sides. From what we have learned, this painting depicts the old method of bucking snow, which involved a steam locomotive with a wedge plow. The engine would get a running start and slam through the snow. The train also carried men who would jump out and shovel snow. Some of the snow was melted to produce more steam power for the locomotives. There appear to be four engines in the painting, and it always yields a great conversation with guests. Someday a docent will be lucky enough to have an old railroad man on a tour to tell us how it was firsthand!

Research note prepared by Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley.

Like, Love, Lust: Michael Sarich Tour Blueprint

Introduction
Like, Love, Lust: Michael Sarich consists of more than one hundred paintings, prints, ceramic sculptures, drawings, and mixed media assemblages created by University of Nevada, Reno Associate Professor of Art Michael Sarich over the last twenty-five years. The NMA originated this exhibition, and Ann Wolfe curated all of the works in the exhibition, which come from public and private collections from around the world. The beautiful catalogue accompanying the exhibition is an entirely original production published by the NMA. It contains essays by Robert Sill, Kirk Robertson, and Ann Wolfe, as well as full-color plates of much of Mike’s work included in this exhibition. It’s available at the Museum Store, and represents the work of many NMA staff.

In addition to the rich visual characteristics of Michael’s work, the exhibition lends itself to conversation topics such as Post War American culture, Pop Culture, symbolism, science, religion, and personal histories. Finally, the exhibition provides a rich opportunity to emphasize the depths to which the NMA supports local artists. A feature exhibition of this size represents an extraordinary investment—financially, intellectually, and artistically—in the work of a local artist.


Wall Texts
LIKE LOVE LUST: MICHAEL SARICH main text panel
The letter L appears in triplicate on Michael Sarich’s heavily tattooed left forearm—indelible marks representing the words like, love, and lust. “I like you. I love you. I lust after you,” the artist stated as he proposed marriage to the woman who is now his wife. For Sarich, the function of a mark—whether on canvas, clay, wood, or his own body—is to communicate with those around him. An Associate Professor of Art at the University of Nevada, Reno since 1989, Sarich has instilled in hundreds of students the importance of cultivating one’s own creative voice. This exhibition critically examines the evolution of Sarich’s personal language of mark-making, while celebrating the important contributions he has made—and will continue to make—both in our community and beyond.
Over the course of his career, Sarich’s art has shifted from deeply personal expressions to broadly social commentaries. From the late seventies to the early nineties, his works overflowed with graffiti-like marks that are scribbled and scrawled on paper, wood, and recycled objects—much like the art produced by Chicago’s Hairy Who artists and those affiliated with Art Brut and Outsider Art. As Sarich’s mark-making continued to shift, he became drawn to an assortment of popular and religious symbols, such as Mickey Mouse and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Even today, he combines such recognizable icons with layers of densely-packed, lyrical marks. This technique places him within a loosely-affiliated, largely West Coast group of artists dubbed Pop Surrealists, who are known for incorporating—and personalizing—an eclectic range of visual source materials.
In 2000, Sarich was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and although it has already had a drastic impact on his speech and motor skills, he continues to pursue his work with unfailing passion and commitment. To view Sarich’s artwork is to trace the path he has navigated thus far; it is to know his family and his friends, his secrets and his wounds. It is to deconstruct a lifetime of experiences in hopes that from his story we gain but an ounce of his unfailing courage and honesty, and learn that it is only by taking risks that we might live without fear of regret.

Bruised and Tattooed: The Early Work
Sarich was a Chicago boy. Born in 1955, he grew up in a two-bedroom rambler in the West Chicago suburb of Rolling Meadows. His father was a hard-nosed, barrel-chested man of Croatian stock with a wry sense of humor and a thick Chicago accent. His mother, small in stature, was Irish Catholic and loving. To Sarich, Chicago meant “family:” a locus of pleasure and pain. A place where fond memories collided with nightmares of a Catholic upbringing and overly stern punishments meted out for the slightest infraction fomented deep-seated anger and frustration.
Sarich’s early works are akin to visual diaries overflowing with unrefined, graffiti-like marks that are scribbled and scrawled across paper or carved into wood. Many of these works refer to his childhood, some are love letters to past girlfriends, and others are snapshots of late nights spent at the bar. “I was taking a daily experience and putting it into a visual story on a nightly basis,” Sarich has said of these early works.

The Social Underbelly: Working Outside the Mainstream
As an undergraduate art student at the Northern Illinois University in DeKalb (1973-80), and then a graduate student at the University of Oklahoma in Norman (1982-83), Michael Sarich was surely aware of the trends ongoing in the mainstream art world. Sarich chose, however, to eschew the Minimalist and Conceptualist tendencies he witnessed, and instead produced works that were intensely personal and autobiographical.
Sarich looked to the work of H.C. Westermann and Chicago’s Hairy Who artists, as well as Jean Dubuffet and others affiliated with Art Brut, whose raw, aggressive, and unrefined sensibilities were often tuned to the social underbelly—a world seemingly more in line with what Sarich has described as his “blue-collar sensibility.”

La Cathédrale de Michele


In 1999, Sarich undertook a major installation that re-examined his Catholic upbringing. La Cathédrale de Michel questioned the ritualized traditions of the Catholic Church by modifying a traditional altar and the iconography associated with it. Mounted at the Nevada Museum of Art, La Cathédrale was a mock-Catholic altar adorned with ceramic skulls, black-and-white gambling dice, hundreds of dotted dominoes, and a kitschy sculpture of Venus de Milo (the Greek Goddess of love and beauty) in place of the traditional Virgin Mary shrine.
Created just two years after the death of his father, Sarich once called La Cathédrale a shrine to his dad, who, as Sarich explains, “used to play dice in the streets.” The installation seemed to cynically assert that religion is just a game to help people come to terms with their mortality. Sarich’s reconsideration of the symbols he was once taught to revere as sacred would prove crucial to the development of his future body of work.

Looking Inside: The Body Parts
Michael Sarich has spent considerable time investigating the intricacies of the human body. From anatomical renderings of internal organs to ceramic sculptures depicting cellular processes, Sarich’s works invite us beneath the skin’s surface to search for meaningful answers to life’s complex questions.
The organs and appendages Sarich depicts are often detached from the human body, and as such, their fragility is exposed to the exterior world. Having suffered from a collapsed lung as a child and unexplained heart problems in 1993, Sarich has long been aware of the vulnerability of the human body—an awareness that has become even more poignant, given his recent diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease.

All Mashed Up: Pop Surrealism
Michael Sarich’s most recent paintings and sculptures combine popular icons with recurring personal references. Often a large centralized icon—such as the Virgin of Guadalupe or Mickey Mouse—is surrounded or overlaid with densely packed, lyrical drawings; a combination of marks whose lines and shapes ebb and flow like varying musical tempos. This eclectic layering and combination of influences, often imbued with a dose of political inflection, places Sarich within a loosely-affiliated, largely West Coast group of artists dubbed Pop Surrealists by Kirsten Anderson in 2004.
According to Anderson, Pop Surrealism is:
"an amalgamation of so many things: tattoo, graffiti, retro culture, cartoons, etc., all mashed up and used to create something that transcended its mere visual appeal. Something that spoke profoundly...about using pop culture’s castoff detritus to create something meaningful and beautiful. And if it wasn’t beautiful, well, it was exciting. It delighted the eye and shocked the sensibilities, and was a welcome change from the increasing boorishness of the recycled ideas and stale conceptualism found in most contemporary art."

I used to scream at the viewer. Now I talk to them.
Over the course of Michael Sarich’s life, his relationship to mark-making has become increasingly complex, while his iconography has evolved from the deeply personal to the broadly social by way of symbolic and popular references. “In my early work I was wearing my heart on my sleeve, real gushy,” Sarich recollects.
In the early nineties, shortly after accepting a teaching position at the University of Nevada, Reno, Sarich began to regularly incorporate popular symbols and icons into his art. “Crying in your beer is okay, but you have to get over it,” he surmised. “So I shifted to social imagery as a visual hook: something to draw the viewer in first. I used to scream at the viewer, now I talk to them.” Although his art remains deeply personal, Sarich prefers that viewers derive their own meanings from his paintings and sculptures. “Art,” Sarich asserts, “is a communication that has dialogue with the viewer.”

What the Hell’s going on here? A Postmodern Puzzle
Michael Sarich hopes that his art will elicit multiple interpretations and a range of responses. “What the Hell’s going on here?” he wants us to ask. “Why did this person do this?” Sometimes the symbols he depicts are so dense with historical, social, and political meanings that they seem to become empty—or meaningless.
Within the cacophonous visual stew that Sarich assembles, the definitions of symbols and icons shift freely depending on the sensibilities of the viewer. Mickey Mouse may or may not represent the happiest place on earth, swastika symbols are free to assume the positive energy of their ancient roots, and that perpetual smiley face seen on the side of Wal-Mart bags across the nation does not necessarily represent happiness.
In the end, one’s attempt to explain these paintings and sculptures might be best described as an absurdist game—one haunted, simultaneously, by the attempt to discover meaning and by the lingering suspicion that there is no meaning at all. Postmodern puzzles, they are indeed.

Mike’s Office, University of Nevada, Reno
Since 1989, Sarich has occupied Office #201 in the Church Fine Arts Building on the campus of the University of Nevada, Reno. Although Sarich is rarely in his office (he prefers to meet with students in the painting studio), it is a treasure trove of postcards, mementos, and newspaper clippings that provides insight into his creative process. This re-creation of Sarich’s office attempts to capture the spirit and energy of one of UNR’s most legendary places.

Orientation
You’ll find Like, Love, Lust installed in the Feature Gallery East and Feature Gallery South on the third floor. The exhibition is largely chronological and organized into three broad categories—“Early Work,” “Body Parts,” and “Late Work,” with spotlight attention on a reconstruction of Mike’s “office” and La Cathedrele de Michel, an installation piece that has been previously exhibited at the NMA. While we don’t intend to dictate how people should experience the exhibition, the exhibition is laid out with a narrative in mind, which is to say that there is a story to be told about Michael’s work as it has evolved and matured over the years.

Relevant Vocabulary
Pop Art is a visual art movement that emerged in the mid-1950s in Britain and in parallel in the late-1950s in the United States. The coinage of the term Pop Art is often credited to British art critic/curator, Lawrence Alloway in an essay titled The Arts and the Mass Media, although the term he uses is “popular mass culture.” Nevertheless, Alloway was one of the leading critics to defend mass culture and Pop Art as a legitimate art form. Pop Art is one of the major art movements of the twentieth century. Characterized by themes and techniques drawn from popular mass culture, such as advertising and comic books, pop art is widely interpreted as either a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism or an expansion upon them. Pop Art, like pop music, aimed to employ images of popular, as opposed to elitist, culture in art, emphasizing the banal or kitschy elements of any given culture. It has also been defined by the artists’ use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques that downplay the expressive hand of the artist. Pop Art at times targeted a broad audience, and often claimed to do so. Much of Pop Art is considered very academic, as the unconventional organizational practices used often make it difficult for some to comprehend. Pop Art and Minimalism are considered to be the last modern art movements and thus the precursors to postmodern art, or some of the earliest examples of postmodern art themselves.

Pop Surrealism (also Lowbrow, or lowbrow art) describes an underground visual art movement that arose in the Los Angeles, California, area in the late 1970s. Lowbrow is a widespread populist art movement with origins in the underground comics world, punk music, hot-rod street culture, and other California subcultures. It is also often known by the name pop surrealism. Lowbrow was born of underground culture. Lowbrow art has a sense of humor. Sometimes the humor is gleeful, sometimes impish and sometimes it's of sarcastic comment, but it is always present.
Most lowbrow artworks are paintings, but there are also toys, digital art, and sculpture.
In an article in the February 2006 issue of his magazine Juxtapoz, Robert Williams took credit for originating the term “lowbrow art.” He stated that, in 1979, Gilbert Shelton of the publisher Rip-Off Press decided to produce a book featuring Willams's paintings. Williams said that he decided to give the book the self-deprecating title, “The Lowbrow Art of Robt. Williams,” since no authorized art institution would recognize his type of art. “Lowbrow” was thus used by Williams in opposition to highbrow. He said the name then stuck, even though he feels that it is inappropriate.
Lowbrow is also commonly referred to as pop surrealism. Kirsten Anderson, who edited the book Pop Surrealism, considers lowbrow and pop surrealism to be related but distinct movements. She defined Pop Surrealism thus: “an amalgamation of so many things: tattoo, graffiti, retro culture, cartoons, etc., all mashed up and used to create something that transcended its mere visual appeal. Something that spoke profoundly…about using pop culture’s castoff detritus to create something meaningful and beautiful. And if it wasn’t beautiful, well, it was exciting. It delighted the eye and shocked the sensibilities, and was a welcome change from the increasing boorishness of the recycled ideas and stale conceptualism found in most contemporary art.” However, Matt Dukes Jordan, author of Weirdo Deluxe, views the terms as interchangeable.

Chicago Imagists were a group of representational artists associated with the School of the Art Institute of Chicago who exhibited at the Hyde Park Art Center in the late 1960s. Their work was known for grotesquerie, surrealism, and complete uninvolvement with New York art world trends. One remarkable thing about them was the high proportion of female artists among them. There are three distinct groups that, outside of Chicago, are indiscriminately bundled together as Imagists: The Monster Roster, the Hairy Who, and the Chicago Imagists.

The Hairy Who was a subgroup of the Chicago Imagists (see above). Don Baum curated three “Hairy Who” exhibitions at the Hyde Park Art Center in 1966, 1967, and 1968. The name is meant to sound like a rock group. The Hairy Who included: Don Baum, James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, Karl Wirsum

The Monster Roster was a subgroup of Chicago artists within the larger group of Chicago Imagists (see above), several of whom served in World War II and were able to go to art school thanks to the G.I. Bill. They were given their name in 1959 by critic Franz Schulze, based on their existential, sometimes gruesome, semi-mystical figurative work. The Monster Roster included: Don Baum, Carlo Campoli, George Cohen, Dominic Di Meo, Leon Golub, Theodore Halkin, June Leaf, Seymour Rosofsky, Nancy Spero, H. C. Westermann, Karl Wirsum

Outsider Art as a term was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for Art Brut (which literally translates as “Raw Art” or “Rough Art”), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture. Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane asylum inmates. While Dubuffet's term is quite specific, the English term “Outsider Art” is often applied more broadly, to include certain self-taught or Naïve art makers who were never institutionalized. Typically, those labeled as Outsider Artists have little or no contact with the institutions of the mainstream art world; in many cases, their work is discovered only after their deaths. Much Outsider Art illustrates extreme mental states, unconventional ideas, or elaborate fantasy worlds. Outsider Art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1992); thus the term is sometimes misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the "art world" mainstream, regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.

Art Brut see above.



Prominent Sarich Symbols

• Turtle considered by essayist Robert Sill to be Michael Sarich’s alter ego, this symbol first appeared in his early work after he was invited to join a group of turtle hunters on one of his fishing trips. The symbol has many meanings, but is connected to the idea of inner and outer, inside/outside, and self reliance.

• Fish a symbol of personal significance, Sarich was an avid sport fisherman. You’ll see fish symbols in much of Sarich’s work, but also fishing-related symbols such as nets, floats, and eggs.

• Virgin of Guadalupe a symbol of Catholicism, particularly important in Latino traditions. She is considered an apparition of the Virgin Mary, and is Mexico’s most beloved religious and cultural image. Sarich finds it interesting, in part, because of the vast commercialization of her image.

• Mickey Mouse like the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mickey Mouse is a vastly commercialized figure, which is the reason for Sarich’s interest.

• Beach Ball this symbol carries deep personal significance for Sarich. As a boy, Sarich’s father, who was at times abusive, jumped into a lake to “save” a family beachball from disappearing, despite his inability to swim. The effort had a lasting impact on Sarich.

• Swasktika derived from the Sankskrit word svasktika, meaning any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote good luck. It is composed of su-, meaning “good, well,” and asti, a verbal abract to the root as “to be;” svasti thus means “well-being.” The suffix –ka forms a diminutive, and svastika might thusbe ranslated literally as “little thing associated with well-being,” corresponding to “lucky charm” or “thing that is auspicious.” Probably first used inNeolithic India

• Birds particularly finches, are prominent symbols in Sarich’s work signifying Darwinian science, in particular. The direct relationship is that Darwin studied finches in the Galapagos Islands noting the peculiarly unique shapes of the beaks of thirteen related species.

• Nests in addition to the relationship to birds (see above), nests also signify an important sense of home and security in Sarich’s art.

• Buoys related to fish (see above).

• Skull Sarich is fascinated by the history of skull imagery, particularly in the traditions of the imagery of Tibetan monastics, Dia de los Muertos, motorcycle culture, and tattoo flash.

• Smiley Face the Wal-Mart smiley face signifies all kinds of tensions and uncertainties in Sarich’s work, especially in the relationships between “happiness” and “consumerism” and “commercialization.”

• Body parts are prominent in Sarich’s art, and signify much related to his interest in inner/outer, internal/external, science, and systems (skeletal, reproductive, digestive, neurological, etc.). Of course, this interest is cast into a different light considering his diagnosis in 2000 with Parkinson’s disease.

• Prop this image figures prominently in much of Sarich’s more recent work. Remember that he claims no definition for it; however, it does signify notions of the prop (fishing, fishing boats, power); proposition (e.g., suggestion, question, proposal); as well as an effort to reclaim the meaning of an ancient and powerful symbol from its having been corrupted by the forces of the third reich.

Tour Framework

• Ask guests to think about any symbols, images, or icons that hold some significance for them. What are the symbols and images that they find significant, and why?

• Explain that, as an artist, Mike Sarich has spent his whole career exploring the significance of personal and cultural symbols and icons, and that it is on his exploration of these symbols that part of the tour will be based.

• Explain that “Like, Love, Lust” is a reference to the tattoo on Mike’s left hand and wrist, a mark that he had made on his arm in honor of his proposal of marriage to his wife, Valerie.

• Explain that the three Ls are referents for Like, Love, and Lust, and that he had the word Life tattooed on his arm after Valerie accepted his marriage proposal—signifying his the commitment he was making to her.

• Explain to guests that the exhibition is laid out more or less chronologically, beginning with his earliest work as a graduate student.

• Convey the story about when Mike, on a fishing trip as a young art student, was invited by a group of turtle hunters to join them in their hunt. The experience had a significant impact on Mike as a young man and as an artist, and images of turtles remain in his work today.

• Ask guests to compare the qualities of the turtle drawings on the north wall of the East Gallery with the adjacent drawings called “Stop” and “Cocaine” on the east wall of the gallery. What words could be used to describe each group of drawings? Hints: the turtle drawings are highly detailed, with a very fine draftsmanship quality to them; conversely, “Stop” and “Cocaine” are purposely rough, almost unfinished, and child-like.

• Explain that Mike Sarich is a highly trained artist: he completed his MFA degree at the University of Oklahoma in 1983. The highly refined style of the turtle drawings is a result, in part, of this academic training. Compared or contrasted to the “Cocaine” and “Stop” drawings on the east wall of the East Gallery, we can see a much less refined style—this is on purpose, and is the result of experimentations with the influence of artists in the groups known as Chicago Imagists, The Monster Roster, and, especially, The Hairy Who.

• Explain to guests that Sarich was raised on the west side of Chicago, and that as a young man, he was very interested in the work of The Hairy Who artists, including Don Baum, James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, and especially Karl Wirsum.

• Ask guests to consider Sarich’s sculptures hanging on the west wall of the East Gallery. What kinds of words might be used to describe them? Hints: folk, folk art, found object, handmade, natural materials, etc.

• Explain that as a result of the influence of the Chicago Imagists and especially The Hairy Who artists, Sarich took an early and strong interest in found object, folk-art-inspired sculpture. Yet the work is extraordinarily personal: Sarich loves to fish, for example, and the piece titled “Hope” was created by Sarich for a pregnant friend.

• Ask guests to consider what kinds of messages Sarich’s early work in the East Gallery seems to convey.

• Explain that Sarich sees in his early work (all of which is in the East Gallery) an effort on his part to “wear his emotions on his sleeves” and that he seems to be “screaming at the viewer.”

• Explain to guests that as he matured as an artist, Sarich felt that he moved away from a heart-on-his-sleeve, scream-at-you style, to a more subtle style that engages the viewers where they are at, asking them to think about things such as American consumer culture, Darwinian science, symbols and their meanings, and so on.

• Explain to guests that the NMA has re-created Sarich’s office at UNR in the gallery for guests to see the creative “melting pot” that is part of his inspiration.

• Ask guests to consider the artwork in the Body Parts section of the gallery. What do they see as Sarich’s interest in this part of his work? At first, guests might see little or nothing that Sarich might be getting at, but ask them to consider what kinds of body parts that are represented: a heart, a stomach, a penis, and a brain in “Fishin’ in the Dark,” for example.

• Encourage guests to extrapolate from this information further…e.g., that not only are these individual body parts, but they are the organs that are central to specific bodily systems—circulatory, digestive, reproductive, and nervous, respectively, in this example.

• Explain that as Sarich’s interest turned to making his work less personal and more widely culturally-oriented, he heard a radio story while fishing on a boat that the cat had become the most popular American pet, surpassing the dog for the first time. As a result, Sarich began to incorporate cat images in his artwork, beginning with “Stewart’s Cat,” and then the “Dice” woodblock prints. The images are an effort on the artist’s part to engage viewers in his art on a broader, cultural level, rather than on the significance of his personal imagery and symbols. As a result of this experimentation with culturally relevant imagery and symbols, Sarich spent more time exploring images--symbols such as birds (symbols of Darwinian science, and Darwin’s famous examination of the beaks of finches), Wal-Mart smiley faces (symbols of low prices or mass consumerism, depending on your perspective), images of the Virgin of Guadalupe (symbols of fervent religious belief or commercialization of religion, again, depending on your perspective), and images of skulls, cathedrals, Mickey Mouse, props, and swastikas.
  

• Ask guests to look at one of the “Primary Prop” paintings. Ask what kinds of meanings they can associate with the image of the prop: boat props, propellers, BMWs, propositions, questions, deals, offers, inquiries, motions, power, etc.

• Explain that Sarich is very interested in the meanings of symbols, and how they come to mean what they do. For example, the image of the swastika is one that has ancient roots in Native American and Hindu cultural activities, but which has a particular, and very bad, meaning for twentieth-century westerners. He is interested in the ways in which the symbol’s meaning came to change, and how to reclaim, or appropriate, the symbol’s meaning from its relatively recent history.

• Ask guests about what they might have thought about Sarich’s artwork as they entered the gallery. Has any of their thinking shifted as a result of seeing it in the light of the information about Sarich’s personal life, interests, and some of the meanings of his work?

• Finally, thank guests for their time and attention, and for their interest in, and support of, the Nevada Museum of Art.

Michael Sarich Dose of Art Lesson Plan

Objectives: After viewing Like, Love, Lust: Michael Sarich, and learning about the influences, art, and stories of artist Michael Sarich, children participating in the Dose of Art will enter a classroom to create a work of their own inspired by the art of Michael Sarich. Students will learn about different kinds of marks used to make drawings, about the elements and principles of art, and about icons and symbols of personal and cultural significance. Students will then learn about the kinds of marks that can be made using different kinds of media, including colored pencils, crayons, and oil pastels. This process will give children the opportunity to experiment with multiple media, to learn about the elements and principles of art, and to create a drawing of their own from simple materials.

Vocabulary: mark, line, shape, color, symbol, icon, shade, value, tone, layer, study

Materials: 7”x22” railroad board; glue sticks; 5”x20” drawing paper; pencils; colored pencils; crayons; oil pastels; scratch paper

Lesson Description:
• When students come into the classroom from the tours, discuss Sarich’s artwork and what students have learned about it and the artist from their tour and the exhibition.
• Each classroom contains a classroom pack of crayons, colored pencils, and oil pastels, plus pre-cut railroad board and drawing paper, and glue sticks.
• Explain that a drawing can be a sketch, or a study, for a larger artwork, but it can also be a finished artwork itself.
• Explain that a drawing can be made with many different kinds of tools and media, including pencils, charcoal, colored pencils, crayons, oil pastels, chalk, and even dirt!
• Explain that each different kind of media conveys a different kind of feeling when it is used to make a mark on a piece of paper or other drawing surface, but that the way the media is used also has a profound impact on the feeling of a drawing.
• Ask students what kinds of feelings Sarich’s artwork makes them feel.
• Ask students to choose a type of media—a pencil, a colored pencil, a crayon, or an oil pastel. Then, on scratch paper, ask them to make one mark on the paper that feels or looks happy, another mark that feels or looks angry, and another mark that feels or looks sad. Ask the students whether there are other kinds of feelings that could be conveyed by the marks in a drawing.
• Ask students what kinds of symbols and icons they saw in the Sarich exhibition. Why do they think he might have chosen these particular symbols to focus upon in his art? What seems important or significant about the symbols to him?
• Explain that students will be creating a drawing using symbols and icons from the Sarich exhibition as well as symbols and icons that are important to them.
• Ask students to use a pencil and scratch paper and to draw for a few minutes. Ask them to think about three symbols or images that each of them feels is important in one way or another, and to draw those symbols on the scratch paper.
• When each student has two or three symbols sketched on their scratch paper, give each student a piece of the 5”x20” drawing paper for their use. Ask them to re-create the symbols across the paper using pencil if they would like, or any other media (be sure to encourage them to make them large enough to cross the entire paper, and to repeat them, if necessary).
• When the initial symbols are sketched in, ask the students to use and to experiment with multiple media—crayons, pencil, colored pencil, and oil pastel—to to create multiple layers of color, tone, and density in their images. Be sure to encourage them to fill up the paper—fill in the white space with marks!
• Encourage students to use numerous colors, but preferably to encourage them to think about the colors used in Michael Sarich’s work: primary colors, primarily!
• When their drawings are complete, give each student a sheet of the 7”x22” railroad board. Explain that they should turn their drawings over carefully and place just a few dabs of gluestick along the border, center it on the black railroad board, and mount their drawings in a “frame” to take home.

Marks on the Land: An Exhibition of The Altered Landscape, the Carol Franc Buck Collection Tour Blueprint

December 16, 2007-May 4, 2008

Introduction

Edward Burtynksy, Nickel Tailings #36, Sudbury, Ontario (1996)

This survey of The Altered Landscape, the Carol Franc Buck Collection consists of fourteen photographic prints depicting different kinds of human marks on the land. From the impermanent conceptual marks made by Jim Sanborn in his landscape-scale light projections, to the far more insidious and permanent scars on the land made by mining operations depicted in Terry Evans’ and Edward Burtynsky’s photographs, each of the eight artists in this survey grapples with ideas about how and why people make land-marks—and what effects the marks have on our perception, understanding, and relationship to the land.

The exhibition lends itself to discussions of landscape history (à la Jennifer Bethke’s recent Museum School class), how people treat different kinds of landscapes, and how we learn to understand landscapes and identify ourselves in relation to them.

This exhibition is presented as part of the NMA Art + Environment exhibition series, an initiative that brings community, artists, and scholars together to explore the interaction between people and their environments

The Altered Landscape, the Carol Franc Buck Collection

As you know, The Altered Landscape Collection is the largest collection within the museum—numbering more than 600 pieces—and is made up almost exclusively of contemporary photography, beginning with The New Topographics, and more contemporary work that has grown out of that movement. Historically important twentieth-century photography—that of Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, in particular—has been added to the collection to contextualize the work within the collection, as well as within the history of twentieth-century photography in general.

If the NMA is known nationally for its collections, it is known for The Altered Landscape Collection specifically. Beginning in the mid-1990s, the museum began acquiring photography for a new signature focus collection. The museum’s motivation was to gather landscape works that would address audiences across cultural boundaries and, over time, to position the Museum as a unique visual and intellectual resource. The NMA sought to highlight environmental issues, already emphasized in other areas of the Museum’s collection, and provide a forum for the study and appreciation of land, environment, and environmental thought in art. The NMA’s goal was to recognize the tremendous contribution that photographers have made to our understanding of place and environment, while building its collection in a new direction.

The Altered Landscape is, at its core, about the American west, especially the Great Basin. As the eastern landscapes depicted by the Hudson River School painters gradually disappeared through conversion to human settlement, the west assumed a greater role as the representative of the idea of “wilderness.” For generations, photographers such as William Henry Jackson, Timothy O’Sullivan, Carleton E. Watkins, Edward Weston, Imogen Cunningham, Ansel Adams, and Eliot Porter played a leading role in how the landscape was perceived. Their imagery projected and reinforced a romanticized view of the environment in which landscape is an expression of a beautiful and sublime ‘nature.’

By the mid-1970s, however, a small group of photographers, including Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Joe Deal, Bernd and Hilla Becher, and Frank Gohlke began to challenge this traditional view. In the influential exhibition at George Eastman House in 1975 titled “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape,” these photographers focused on contemporary industrial culture—land transformed by human presence. Collectively, they rejected the approach of viewing landscape as beauty, for the “sake of art,” isolated from the context of culture. For the New Topographics photographers, as they came to be known, landscape photography needed to reveal a new artistic viewpoint in response to the specific content of the images. For them, and those that followed, landscape photography needed to challenge traditional notions about land and landscape, beauty, and the nature and purposes of photography. It is in this context that we find the newest exhibition of works from this collection.

The current exhibition’s images depict landscapes in the American West and elsewhere that have been marked in some way—physically, conceptually, artistically, irrevocably— documented by photographers such as Richard Misrach and Terry Evans. The critical edge to some of the works in the exhibition is very clear: Robert Dawson and Edward Burtynsky subtly characterize marks on the land caused by dams and mining operations, for example. Others, such as Jim Sanborn and John Pfahl, photograph other kinds of marks: impermanent light projections of which the only record is the photograph, and more physical, yet still temporary, marks made on the land in the conceptual photographs of John Pfahl.

Orientation

You’ll find the exhibition hung in the Altered Landscape Gallery. The east and north walls feature photographs of much more physical marks on the land: Edward Burtynsky’s photographs of nickel tailings in the surface water in Ontario, Canada, for example. On the south and west walls are photographs of marks that are more conceptual in nature: John Pfahl’s photographs of temporary but still physical lines on the side of a shed, images of Christo’s monumentally-sized landscape installations, or Jim Sanborn’s photos of light projections on geologic formations in the west.

Vocabulary

Silver Gelatin print
Photograph on paper or plasticized paper coated with an emulsion of light-sensitive silver salts suspended in gelatin, printed out or developed out, and fixed. Came into general use in the 1880s; the developed variety remains the standard black-and-white photographic process.

Dye Transfer print (e.g. Polaroid).
Self-developing color photograph. The complex process, first described by Edwin Land in 1947, has been popular among amateurs and artists since the early 1960s.

Chromogenic print (also chromogenic dye coupler or C-Type print)
The most common type of color photograph, printed from a chromogenic color negative; consists of dyes within gelatin layers on a plastic-coated paper base. Subject to fading and color shifts in dark storage and on exhibition. Developed in the 1940s as an outgrowth of chromogenic color transparencies (Kodachrome, invented in 1935). Used by amateurs and artists alike. (Also called "C-print" or referred to by various brand names.)

Tour Framework

• Explain that the Altered Landscape, Carol Franc Buck Collection is the largest collection in the NMA permanent collection, and that it contains almost 700 photographs that depict landscapes changed at the hands of humans, primarily from the second half of the twentieth century forward.

• Ask guests what they see in Robert Dawson’s photograph “Spillway, Lake Berryessa, California.”

• Explain that Robert Dawson is a San Francisco-based photographer whose work deals primarily with altered landscapes of the west. This photograph depicts a dam on the Putah Creek in Solano/Napa Counties in California.

• Ask guests what kind of message(s) Dawson’s photograph conveys about the spillway.

• Invite guests to look at James Turrell’s photograph “Roden Crater Low Aerial Oblique Looking Toward N.E.”

• Ask guests what they think they are seeing in the photograph. Does anyone know where the Roden Crater is located, or why it exists?

• Explain that Roden Crater is a volcanic crater located at the edge of the Painted Desert near Flagstaff, Arizona. James Turrell is primarily a sculptor and installation artist, who has a mining claim on the Roden Crater. He has spent more than twenty years opening caverns in the interior of the crater, creating an open air observatory for viewing stars without the aid of a telescope.

• Ask guests to compare the Turrell image and the Dawson image. What are the differences between the human-made marks on the land in the images?

• Explain that Richard Misrach’s photograph “Battleground Point #21” is an image of a part of the Carson Sink, northeast of Fallon, Nevada.

Richard Misrach, Battleground Point #21, 1999.

• Ask guests to consider Terry Evans’ photograph before they look at or learn its title. What do guests think they are seeing in the image?

• Explain that the image depicts a gravel pit north of Kanopolis, Kansas. In her artwork, Terry Evans has photographed sites all over the Midwest, particularly in and around Chicago.

• Ask guests what kinds of things the artist might be choosing to emphasize by taking an aerial photograph of a landscape instead of a “traditional” landscape photograph?

• Ask guests to consider Edward Burtynsky’s photographs before their perceptions are directed by the wall labels and the works’ titles. What do the images appear to be of? Do they look anything like, say, the Yellowstone National Park mud springs or something similar?

• Explain that the images are Burtynsky’s depictions of the effects on the landscape of dangerous nickel tailings near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. The tailings have polluted both the ground and surface water of this area near Lake Huron in the Great Lakes region.

• Ask guests to compare the marks on the land in Evans’ and Burtynsky’s photographs. In what ways are they similar? In what ways are they different?

• Ask guests if they thought of the photographs as beautiful initially. Why? Does the information about the subject of the photographs affect their beauty? Why or why not?

• Ask guests to consider how the photographs by Burtynsky, Evans, Dawson, Turrell, and Misrach are different from the photographs of Sanborn, Pfahl, and Volz. How are the marks made on the land different between and among them?

• Explain that one of the ways the marks are different has to do with documenting the relationships people have to land. For example, Burtynsky and Dawson document mining and hydroelectric marks made on the land, whereas Pfahl, Sanborn, and Volz document temporary or ephemeral marks made for a very different artistic purpose. Why? What are the artistic purposes or intents of the different photographs?

• Ask guests to look carefully at the grid of John Pfahl photographs on the west wall of the gallery. What does Pfahl focus the viewers’ attention upon in the image? How can you tell? Why would he choose this as a subject?

Pfahl explains the images this way: “The added elements suggest numerous mark-making devices associated with photographs, maps, plans an diagrams. On different occasions, they may pointedly repeat a strong formal element in the landscape…; they may fill in information suggested by the scen….; they may depend upon information external to the photograph itself…; or, finally, they may be only arbitrarily related to the scene….”

• Explain to guests that Pfahl photographs scenes in which he, the artist, has inserted temporary visual aids to create his photographs: string, tape, or wire, for example, that heighten the visual characteristics of the photographs.

• Explain that Jim Sanborn is a sculptor and photographer who is very interested in conceptual understanding in art, as well as physics, light, and landscape.

Sanborn explains: “My original intention was to recreate in some way the work of the nineteenth-century cartographers and photographers who were hired to map and photograph the monumental western landscape.[…] Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, James Turrell, and other artists were doing large-scale installations in the natural environment. Those projects affected the land tremendously, and not always with a pleasing effect on the environment. Bulldozers were brought onto the land, and the land itself was manipulated. I decided to counteract that in some way and still do very large outdoor installations. I had completed several in the early 1970s in which I placed objects in the environment, and the end result was photographs of the outdoor installations.

• Explain that Sanborn built his own large-scale projectors to project light onto geologic landforms. He then photographed the projections, leaving no trace of the large-scale artwork that he had created; the only record of the work is the photograph.

• Ask guests to consider the Wolgang Volz photographs of Christo and Jean-Claude’s “Running Fence” and “Valley Curtain” projects. In what ways are these photographs different from others in the exhibition? What kinds of marks on the land do the photographs document?

• Ask guests to consider the multi-layering of artistic decisions in the photographs. Not only does the photographer-as-artist decide how to frame and compose his image of the subject, but Christo and Jean-Claude have also made artistic decisions regarding the placement and purpose of their installation of cloth and anchors in the landscape.

Conclusion

Art facilitates learning by engaging the senses, bypassing conditioned patterns of thinking and allowing other ways of knowing to come forward, sometimes subtly, and sometimes forcefully. All of the photographers in this exhibition engage our senses—but for very different reasons and purposes. Whether the works focus on natural, cultural, or political aspects of the environment, artists have always been sensitive to environments and responsive to our relationship to environments.