Art from the past and present will collide in 2013 - KansasCity.com

In early November, Colin Mackenzie, senior curator of Chinese art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, travelled to Shanghai for an important exhibition.

?Masterpieces of Early Chinese Painting and Calligraphy in American Collections? features 60 works of Song and Yuan calligraphy and painting lent by the Nelson, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.At one point, the exhibit, which closes today, was attracting more than 8,000 visitors a day in Shanghai. It has nine works from the Nelson, including the museum?s famed ?A Solitary Temple amid Clearing Peaks,? by Li Cheng.?Li Cheng was famed for his ?piled up mountains,? the miniaturist detail of his architecture and human figures, and his dynamic ?crab-claw branches,??? Mackenzie said in an article about the exhibit in the November issue of Asian Art. Another masterwork from the Nelson?s collection that appears in the show is a 24-foot hand scroll, ?Illustration to the Second Prose Poem on the Red Cliff,? attributed to Qiao Zhongchang and ?remarkable,? Mackenzie says, ?for its powerful brushwork and the psychological intensity of its imagery.? Seven other scrolls from the Nelson are featured in the exhibit in Shanghai. On their return to Kansas City, the six scrolls depicting landscapes and three works that didn?t travel will be paired with landscapes by contemporary Chinese artist Xu Longsen in the exhibit ? Journey through Mountains and Rivers: Chinese Landscapes Ancient and Modern.? Opening Feb. 8, the show will occupy three galleries on the museum?s second floor as well as Kirkwood Hall, where visitors will encounter an 85-foot-long by 12-foot-high landscape by Xu Longsen that promises to rival Monet?s ?Water Lilies? in impact. (Monet?s triptych, the focus of a major exhibit in the Bloch Building in spring 2011, measured 42 feet long.) According to Mackenzie, the Xu Longsen scroll will be positioned in a semicircle, ?immersing visitors in a dense landscape of mountains, forests and streams.? The Kirkwood Hall segment of the show will also feature ?Illustration to the Second Prose Poem on the Red Cliff,? which will be accompanied by a movable iPad that visitors can slide across the scroll case for information about the work. The entire show is built around such contrasts of old and new: The second floor will feature a re-creation of Xu Longsen?s studio, where the artist will be in residence during the second week of February; the adjacent Chinese furniture gallery will display his paintings and collection of scholar?s rocks. The exhibit culminates in the Chinese painting gallery, where some of the masterworks shown in Shanghai and others from the museum?s collection will be displayed. They will be accompanied by photographs of the actual Chinese landscape, enlarged details of the paintings and text panels about the each work.?The rise of landscape painting in China from the 10th to the 13th centuries represents one of the most important revolutions in the history of art,? Mackenzie notes in a statement prepared for the show. The exhibit drives home the point that it was in China that landscape first emerged as a primary theme. ?Figures, where present, are often tiny, serving to emphasize the vastness of nature and mankind?s insignificance,? Mackenzie explains. ?Landscape painting was not merely the representation of scenery but also possessed profound philosophical meaning. For the Chinese, landscape was a symbol of the natural way of things ? a central tenet of Daoist (Taoist) philosophy ? an escape from the corrupt world of official life, and an expression of the refined character of the artist.? Xu Longsen picks up on this history in the imagery of his monumental scroll as well as the title: ?The Law of the Dao is its Being What it Is.?In May, the Nelson?s focus shifts to Mexican art, with a big ticketed exhibition of the renowned Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of modern Mexican masterworks. Beginning in 1942 when the Gelmans became Mexican citizens ? he was a film mogul from Russia; she was born in Czechoslovakia ? the couple spent five decades befriending artists and building a collection. It includes the greats: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo and others. Although the Gelmans have passed, the collection continues to grow in accordance with their wishes and includes works by contemporary artists such as Betsabee Romero, who recently led the creation of an elaborate Day of the Dead altar in Kirkwood Hall. The exhibit will feature more than 100 paintings, sculptures, photographs and drawings.And it?s not too soon to begin anticipating a big Impressionist landscape show planned for fall 2013. ?Impressionist France: Visions of Nation from Le Gray to Monet? will feature more than 100 works, including paintings by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and photographs by Gustave Le Gray and ?douard Baldus. The exhibit, co-organized with the St. Louis Art Museum, will focus on the relationship between landscape and national identity.Also on tap for fall is curator of East Asian art Kim Masteller?s exhibit in the Project Space, ?Echoes: Islamic Art and Contemporary Artists.? One of the artists she has lined up is Kuwaiti-born Hamra Abbas, who will exhibit her ?Paper Plates? series, created from thin strips of paper in geometric designs influenced by Islamic art. The plates were shown in a touring exhibition of the 2009 winners of the Jameel Prize, an international award sponsored by the Victoria and Albert Museum honoring artists whose work is inspired by Islamic tradition. Masteller?s ?Echoes? show, like Mackenzie?s ?Journeys through Mountains and Rivers? Chinese exhibit, seeks to enhance understanding of contemporary and historical works by showing them together. The contemporary perspective breathes new life into centuries-old objects, just as the older pieces provide cultural grounding for the contemporary works.Grand Arts opens the seasonGrand Arts leads the charge of 2013 exhibitions with a major one-person show of Kansas City artist Anthony Baab, opening Jan. 18. Since graduating from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2004, Baab has developed quite a following in the Kansas City art world for his detailed drawings inspired by architecture ? he showed a stunner in a fall group show at Dolphin Gallery. Three years in the making, Baab?s Grand Arts show will be his most ambitious production to date and will feature photographs, decollage works, drawings and a live video feed. February brings the irrepressible Xijing Men Collaborative to Kansas City for an exhibit at the Kansas City Art Institute?s H&R Block Artspace. The collaborative?s three members, Tsuyoshi Ozawa from Japan, Chen Shaoxiong from China and Korean Gimhongsok, named themselves for a fictitious country in East Asia, and as the Xijing Men they mount projects and performances that critique and satirize current events and geo-political realities. The three will spend 10 days at the gallery, where they will create a new work to accompany a survey of all their collaborative projects since 2007, including puppet shows and video works. The exhibit is a collaboration with KU?s Spencer Museum of Art, which presented Chen Shaoxiong?s protest art extravaganza, ?Prepared: Strategies for Activist,? in fall 2012. Nerman Museum director Bruce Hartman decided to extend his big ?OppenheimerCollection@20? exhibition into the new year so it can be seen by members of the Association of Art Museum Directors while they?re in Kansas City for their mid-winter meeting Jan. 27-29. New shows will open on Feb. 22, including ?Dark Light: the Ceramics of Christine Nofchissey McHorse,? featuring vessel-based works from the contemporary Navajo artist?s ongoing ?Dark Light? series. McHorse uses micaceous clay from the Taos area, which endows her pots with a distinctive luster, and she takes an innovative approach to form. Her pots ?introduce an element of muscular architectonics and formal complexity to the realm of indigenous southwestern ceramics,? Hartman notes in his news release for the show, ?while her radical, curvilinear clay constructs owe as much to the baroque, Brancusi and Barbara Hepworth as they do to ancient regional forms.?At the Kemper Museum, the ?Map as Art? exhibition continues in the main gallery until April 21. In May the museum will open an exhibit of large-scale photographs by Laura McPhee, a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design who has several well-received books under her belt. The Kemper show will focus on works from her ?River of No Return? (2008), a visual chronicle of the people and landscape of the Sawtooth Valley in central Idaho. Beginning in 2003, McPhee made multiple visits to this remote region, capturing the area?s beauty and the toll of human use on the landscape and wildlife. Fall brings a group show, ?Dressed Up,? featuring works focusing on what the museum?s director, Barbara O?Brien, calls ?the theater of the self.? ?Nature, culture, artifice and perception? are touchstones for the featured works, which will include collages by Nigerian-born Marcia Kure and British photographer Neeta Madahar?s glamor shots of her female friends posed with piles and banks of flowers.

To reach Alice Thorson, art critic, call 816-234-4763 or send email to athorson@kcstar.com.

Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/01/01/3988438/art-from-the-past-and-present.html

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