Neuberger Museum of Art features Sanford Wurmfeld's E-Cyclorama ~ Immersed in Color

Written by Mica Rosenberg Friday, 08 July 2011 22:44

Purchase, NY - Opening May 31 at the Neuberger Museum of Art | Purchase College is E-Cyclorama- Immersed in Color, an amazing exhibition, the centerpiece of which is a monumental painting by Sanford Wurmfeld, made on a canvas stretched onto a 37-foot long oval cyclinder, that is viewed by entering the elevated structure from beneath. ">Notions of space and color addressed in this huge 360-degree work, a 21^st century version of the 19^th century panorama painting. If ever one could stand in the center of a rainbow and experience the entire spectrum of color, this is it.

“You stand between the rising sun and the darkness of the departing night writes Duncan MacMillan in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition. MacMillan curated E-Cylorama when it was first exhibited at the Edinburgh College of Art in 2008. Color modulates as it moves through the entire spectrum, around the oval, so that on the long axis the pure hue of deep violet at one end is opposed to luminous yellow at the other… but the transitions are so subtle, it is impossible to be sure where one color ends and the next begins.” As one’s eye moves across the painted surface, the impact of the shifting color is affected, too, by changes in depth and distance, leaving one to wonder what is really being seen. The effect is dramatic and hypnotic!

The Neuberger show, curated by Avis Larson, Assistant Curator, Neuberger Museum of Art, marks the first time E-Cyclorama will be seen in the United States. Forty mid-size paintings, created by Wurmfeld between 1971-2005, that display the evolution of color concepts in his work, also will be on view from May 31 through September 13, 2009. The opening reception is Friday, June 12, beginning at 5:30 p.m.   It will be a festive evening of tours, music provided by WFUV 90.7 FM deejays, Captain Lawrence beer, wine and hors d’oeuvres. The cost is $20 per person. (Free for Museum and WFUV members.) Reservations are recommended. 914-251-6125.

E-C yclorama is a twenty-first century version of the once popular nineteenth century panorama paintings that were inspired by the original concept invented by Robert Barker in Edinburgh in 1787. The "E" in the title stands for elliptical, the cyclorama’s oval shape, reminiscent, according to the artist, of " lang="EN">the oval plan found in Baroque churches. The effect is baroque, too, as the form exaggerates the optical illusions in the work, and light manipulates color.

“Through the process of optical mixture,” writes MacMillan, “Wurmfeld discovered that being in a space surrounded by color creates unpredictable results and feelings. This is no mere frisson of the eye. Rather, it takes us to the heart of the business of perception and the way painting has evolved around the puzzles of how we see and know, but how, too, our aesthetic sense, our sense of beauty and wonder at the visible world around us, is entangled within the complicated and uncertain business of the way we perceive it.”

The cyclorama structure is raised eight feet off the ground on a platform. Spectators enter from beneath by a stairway that brings them into the center of the work to view the painting that surrounds them. The cylinder measures 37 ½’ x 27 ½’ x 8 ½’. Wurmfeld spent a year painting E-Cyclorama. On close inspection, one can see why: " lang="EN-GB">   the slight variations in tone were precisely measured and meticulously applied in overlapping grids that took the artist a year to plan, and another year to execute. One hundred and nine (109) colors were used.

“Wurmfeld is Seurat’s heir in the way he uses color laid on in a pattern of regular marks,” writes MacMillan. His technique is to work with grid patterns with continuously changing rectangles. He overlays two grids of different sizes, and color moves in and out of the lines.

Wurmfeld said he became intriqued by panoramic painting on a chance detour he made on a family trip to Europe in 1981. He saw in quick succession the Panorama Mesdag  in The Hague, and Monet’s Les Nymphaeas in the Orangerie in Paris. This solidified his ambition to create a fully abstract 360-degree painting.

“I like the idea of being immersed in a painting,” he said. “I want a viewer to be engaged. When you’re standing in the middle of E-Cyclorama, I want you to think you’re in a circle, even though you’re in an oval. This is about color and how we perceive it in space and time. Looking at art should be an active process.”

Exhibition Notes:

Panoramic paintings were first created in Edinburgh in 1788 by the painter Robert Barker. A form of the panoramic painting was adapted by Italian Baroque artists whose painted church ceilings had the effect of lifting the spectator out beyond the actual architecture of the church into a glorious world beyond. Bernini used the dramatic ellipse effect at the Vatican. From the 1780s onwards, the panorama was a form used to display perspective representations or scenes. Panoramas became a popular form of visual entertainment.

Sanford Wurmfeld (b. 1942) is chairman of the Department of Art, Hunter College, CUNY. He studied architecture at Princeton University and majored in Art History at Dartmouth College. He lived and worked Europe, and said his early paintings were inspired by Kline, Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, and Monet. In 1968, his work was included in The Art of the Real 1948-68 at the Museum of Modern Art (the youngest artist in this survey exhibition of post-war American art. During the 1970s, he taught at Cooper Union and California State College. He painted and exhibited continuously, experimenting in various mediums. By the time he saw the Panorama Mesdag in 1981, he had consolidated the idea of combining changing-sized squares with multiple color patterns.

The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York was founded more than 30 years ago as a cultural and intellectual center for modern and contemporary art. Its core collection of 20th century paintings and sculpture contains primary examples of the movements and individuals who shaped modern art. The tenth largest college art museum in the nation with an internationally renowned collection of over 6,000 works of art in all media, the Museum is named after financier and founding patron Roy R. Neuberger, whose extensive art collection forms the core of the Museum’s holdings and who continues to be an active and involved donor. ">It is the fundamental mission of the Neuberger Museum of art to educate the broadest possible audience in, about and through the visual arts. The Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York is located at 735 Anderson Hill Road in Purchase, New York (Westchester). 914-251-6100. Visit : www.neuberger.org/