The Parrish Art Museum Highlights "American Portraits" From its Collection

Written by Eric Summerville Monday, 31 October 2011 00:11

Southampton, New York.- "American Portraits: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum", the fourth in a series of special exhibitions drawn exclusively from the Parrish’s collection, showcases some of the truly exceptional works of art that illustrate the many and varied ways in which artists approach portraiture. The exhibition is presently on display through the 27th of November. William Sidney Mount’s "Portrait of Mrs. Manice" (1833) is the earliest painting in the Parrish collection and a prime example of the importance of portrait painting in the early years of the nation, assigning both status and prominence to the sitter. Mount painted many of Long Island’s best known citizens, and this work, while recalling Renaissance models, remains resolutely American.

William Merritt Chase made his reputation in painting in the late nineteenth century, becoming the most highly-regarded and prolific portrait painter of his day. The intimate portraits of his family are his finest achievements, and the exhibition will include outstanding examples from the Parrish’s renowned holdings. Fairfield Porter’s mid-twentieth century depictions of his family in domestic settings often impart a psychological portrait, and their house on South Main Street in the Village of Southampton was the setting for many of these works. Photographer Dawoud Bey’s astonishing four-part 20 x 24 Polaroid portrait "Anthony" (1999), made during an artist’s residency at the Parrish, brings multiple facets of the sitter, a Southampton teenager, into sharper focus. And a telling portrait by Elizabeth Peyton of her friend and fellow artist Ben Brunnemer, Ben Drawing (2001), a colored-pencil sketch on hotel stationery, deftly captures the moment of artistic creativity. American Portraits provides visitors to the Parrish with a rare opportunity to explore the context in which these works of art were created.


Wether couched in the historical mores of the times, as in Richard Avedon’s trenchant photographic portrait of the Generals of the Daughters of the American Revolution; expressed through intimate and deeply emotional connections, such as Porter’s oil portraits of his wife, the distinguished American poet Anne Channing Porter; or conveyed through a more distanced, almost abstract mode, as seen in Chuck Close’s drawing of his mother-in-law, Fanny, made up entirely of the artist’s own ink fingerprints, the works in the exhibition show how a diverse array of artists have addressed the themes and concepts of portraiture in a variety of media, including painting, drawing, and photography.

Self-portraits in the exhibition include wonderful examples by William King and Joe Zucker that expand in ways both revealing and droll on the nature of the creative process. The exhibition will probe the notion that every portrait is in many ways a self-portrait of the artist, revealing as much about the maker as the sitter. Physical attributes are recorded, certainly, but what remains most telling is the artist’s ability to convey mood, sentiment, and emotion. Mary Ellen Mark’s arresting 1989 photographic portrait of a young Indian girl standing waist-deep in the Ganges is able to convey at once the personal and the political. American Portraits: Treasures from the Parrish Art Museum will explore tradition and innovation in the history of portrait painting, bringing together some seventy-five works from the Museum’s holdings, including, in addition to those already mentioned, works by Mary Abbott, Peggy Bacon, Tina Barney, Adam Bartos, Reynolds Beal, David Burliuk, Robert De Niro, Lydia Field Emmet, Joe Fig, Alex Katz, Frederick Kiesler, William King, Lester Johnson, Elie Nadelman, Larry Rivers, Eugene Speicher, and James McNeill Whistler, among others.

The Parrish Art Museum is located in Southampton, New York. Founded in 1897, the Museum celebrates the artistic legacy of Long Island’s East End, one of America’s most vital creative centers. Since the mid-1950s the Museum has grown from a small village art gallery into an important art museum with a collection of more than 2,600 works of art from the nineteenth century to the present. It includes such contemporary painters and sculptors as John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, Elizabeth Peyton, as well as such masters as Dan Flavin, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Willem de Kooning. The Parrish houses important collections of works by the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase and the post-war American realist Fairfield Porter. A vital cultural resource serving a diverse audience, the Parrish organizes and presents changing exhibitions and offers a dynamic schedule of creative and engaging public programs including lectures, films, performances, concerts, and studio classes for all ages. On July 19, 2010, the Parrish broke ground on a new building designed by internationally acclaimed Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The 34,500-square-foot facility will triple the Museum’s current exhibition space and allow for the simultaneous presentation of loan exhibitions and installations drawn from the permanent collection. The new building is expected to open in summer 2012. Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.parrishart.org/

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