~ Images of Storms ~ at Oklahoma City Museum of Art

Written by Daisy Wargo Thursday, 07 April 2011 23:04

Oklahoma City, OK—On the eve of a record breaking hurricane season, The Oklahoma City Museum of Art presents Tempests and Romantic Visionaries: Images of Storms in European and American Art.  Organized by the Museum and curated by Hardy George, Ph.D., this unique exhibition illustrates the sublime and sometimes destructive power of nature through August 13, 2006.  With over 70 paintings, drawings, and prints from the seventeenth through the twentieth century, Tempests and Romantic Visionaries emphasizes the artists’ dramatic portrayals of storms and their allegorical meanings.

Tempests and Romantic Visionaries is presented thematically in five sections: The Sources of Tempests and Disasters in Western Painting, The Storm in High Romantic Art, Documentation of Ships and Perilous Seas, Mountain Storms in the Catskills and the Far West, and Post-Romantic Storms.  Each section examines the way artists have portrayed turbulent and calm weather conditions in marine and landscape settings.  The exhibit not only concerns the observation and recording of the ever changing effects of clouds, wind, rain, and snow, but also serene subjects of passing storms with clearing skies and peaceful waters.

The use of calm seas, storms, and tempests as symbol and metaphor and the literal depictions of storms are also addressed as well as themes of retribution and divine punishment.  The exhibition focuses on the Romantic interest in storms as exemplified in the works of Eugène Delacroix, Philippe de Loutherbourg, J.M.W. Turner, Thomas Cole, and Thomas Moran.  While the high point of storm subject matter is associated with Romantic art, the exhibition examines the internalization of the storm motif in post-Romantic works by James Tissot, Charles Burchfield, and others. 

Tempests and Romantic Visionaries is accompanied by an audio tour and a catalogue.  Lending museums include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum, and the Georgia Museum of Art, the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, the National Maritime Museum, London, and the Tate Britain, London.

Visit The Oklahoma City Museum of Art at : http://www.okcmoa.com/