The Akron Art Museum Shows "Flora" ~ Photography from the Last 100 Years

Written by Coral McCorkindale Friday, 29 July 2011 23:33

Akron, Ohio.- The Akron Art Museum presents "Flora", featuring works by photographers from the early 20th century to present day, Flora will be on view July 26th through October 23rd at the Akron Art Museum in the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery. Flora includes the Akron debut of recent acquisitions by artists including Imogen Cunningham, Martha Madigan and Northeast Ohio artists Douglas Lucak, Judith McMillan, J. Dwight Palmer, P.J. Rogers and Stephen Tomasko.Flowers have proven to be irresistible subjects for painters and sculptors through the ages and, from the early days of photography, for photographers.

This exhibition, drawn entirely from the collection of the Akron Art Museum, surveys different approaches photographers have used to depict the plant world. Imogen Cunningham’s extreme close-up view, Magnolia Blossom, Tower of Jewels, 1925, is one of the artist’s signature images. Part of an extended study she made of magnolias between 1923 and 1925, the photograph was produced for her own pleasure.  As personal work, it was relegated to spare moments between sittings for portrait commissions and the duties of raising her three sons.

Flowers for Elizabeth, created by André Kertesz at the age of 82, is a seemingly casual glimpse of the domestic life of the artist. The image is a carefully composed paean to the romance and affection still alive in Kertesz’s four decade-long marriage. A special treat in Flora is the opportunity to see a group of works by Jeannette Klute, a pioneer of color photography who died in 2009 at the age of 91.  Her photographs were featured in Edward Steichen’s 1950 exhibition All Color Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and solo shows of her work were circulated internationally by the Smithsonian and Kodak International.  "My purpose has been to somehow express the feeling one experiences being out of doors,” Klute wrote. “I am concerned with the delight to the senses as much as with the intellectual. The woods are mystical and enchanting to me as well as spiritual.”

The museum has continued to enrich the lives of those in Northeast Ohio and beyond through modern art. Its nationally recognized collection was documented through the publication of collection catalogues. Spanning three centuries, like the museum's collection, together they symbolize the museum's dual role as preserver of the past and herald of the future. Art made from 1850 to 1950 graces the C. Blake McDowell, Jr. Galleries. On view are outstanding examples of turn-of-the-twentieth century realism and American impressionism including paintings by Childe Hassam, Frederick Frieseke, William Merritt Chase and Ohio's own Frank Duveneck. Many of these works came from the collection of the museum's co-founder Edwin C. Shaw. One gallery explores modernism and regionalism in northeast Ohio from the 1910s to 1950, and another is devoted to William Sommer, this region's most important historical artist. The Akron Art Museum is the only place in the nation where Sommer's work is on permanent view.

Art created since 1950 is featured in the Sandra L. and Dennis B. Haslinger Family Foundation Galleries. The eclecticism of style in late 20th century art is revealed through examples of postmodern painting and sculpture, photorealism, Pop art and works that continue surrealist and expressionist approaches. Galleries are organized thematically, an example being artists' varied representations of the human body. On view are 'Linda' by Chuck Close, a monumental early painting; the witty silkscreen painting 'Elvis' by Andy Warhol; and Ohio carver and preacher Elijah Pierce's animated relief sculpture 'The Wise and Foolish Virgins and Four Other Scenes'. Other spaces explore both the subtlety and power of abstraction. Masterpieces by Donald Judd, Jackie Winsor and Sol LeWitt present an elegant vision of space ordered through geometry. Frank Stella's enormous Diepholz (which is both painting and sculpture) and African artist El Anatsui's shimmering wall hanging made from hundreds of liquor bottle caps, address abstraction through a more emotional or instinctual world view. A separate room in the Haslinger Family Galleries is devoted to the first work of installation art to enter the museum's collection - Atrabiliairios (Defiant), by Colombian sculptor Doris Salcedo. The piece's elegantly ordered rectangular niches belie its visceral content and materials related to the politics of Colombia. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.akronartmuseum.org

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