at NOMA
General Exhibition Description
Working closely with Miranda Lash, former curator of modern and contemporary art,
Prospect.3’s exhibition at the New Orleans Museum of Art integrates works of modern and
contemporary art into the museum’s collections so as to suggest a synergy between the city’s
first and grandest museum with the art and ideas of the present. While diverse aspects of the
encyclopedic museum’s departments are referenced and drawn upon, the exhibition places the
NOMA collection in conversation with the modern and the contemporary as it pertains to
Prospect.3: Notes for Now.
A key aspect that is returned to often throughout the exhibition is the idea of Otherness and the
integration of the “Other” into the Western canon, as well as the co-opting of canonic forms by
“peripheral” artists as a means of creating new and hybrid artistic movements. Our touchstone
is Paul Gauguin who saw himself in “the Other” and, through his obsessive practice and
undeniable exoticization of a culture that was not his own, was able to find himself. By applying
a Western eye and aesthetic as a means of appropriating foreign culture, Gauguin became an
early arbiter of hybridity in contemporary art practice. His work in the NOMA collection
exemplifies this hybridity-- the Tahitian women he depicts are here crystallized on stained-glass
doors typical of European churches.
A group of works by Tarsila do Amaral coincides with the museums early 20th century
collection, and will call into question the relationship between artistic ideas and ideals of
similarity and difference in global art. In particular her work engages with ideas about
otherness and Western canonization. Tarsilado Amaral’s work proposes a modernism that
cannibalizes foreign and native influences and elevates the local or site-specific. While Gauguin
found “the Other” somewhere else, Tarsila do Amaral found “the Other” in herself—which
ultimately becomes representative of an entire country and not just the individual.
Several artists from the Modernist period will be presented in the modern and contemporary
galleries, whose work attests to the presence of different narratives within Modernism and
their influence on contemporary artists and practice. Three key works by Alma Thomas, who
was one of the first black women artists to infiltrate white institutions and spaces, are on view.
Her work is important in terms of the strides she made in her use of color and abstract form.
New Orleans born Ed Clark is placed here as well, in conversation with his friend Joan
Mitchell, from the NOMA collection, as well as the playful late surrealist figuration of Huguette
Caland.
In another take on Modernity, artist Jeffrey Gibson reimagines a Modernist conversation
about Native American contemporary art from an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in
New York in the 1940s, and posits a different outcome for that conversation here in the
contemporary galleries at NOMA.
Andrea Fraser will present a performance that will explore racial relations in the South. As a
white Northerner, her voice and body will act as substitute and avatar as she performs stories of
black and white attempts at dialogue and confrontation in New Orleans. She assumes a locality
and site-specificity that is not her own—an intrusion that confronts the lack of diversity in the
voices that are heard within traditional institutions, questions human limits of empathy for “the
Other” and highlights the absence of certain bodies while also, like in Gibson’s work,
underlining the ease with which conversations of race slide into exoticization.
The work at NOMA might easily be seen through the lens of the Antropofagia movement and its
concept of cannibalization of foreign influence as a necessary means for the creation of
something entirely new and culturally specific. What is particularly interesting is the way that
this tactic of hybridization has been born out of necessity, and is not, in fact, geographically or
temporally specific but rather one of the globally unifying factors of this international biennial.
Artist Project Descriptions and Biographies
Frederick J. Brown (Great Hall)
Frederick James Brown (b. Georgia, 1945; d. 2012) was an American artist
whose paintings elaborated upon his interest in African American and Native
American culture and music, primitive folk art, European religious art,
contemporary abstract expressionism and the figurative style. Brown’s
intensely colored oil portraits and mixed-media drawings of jazz legends
such as Louis Armstrong, writers such as Tennessee Williams, folk heroes
such as John Henry and Geronimo, and religious figures comprise the
majority of his oeuvre. Through these images, Brown, who was born in
Georgia, grew up in Chicago, and lived in SoHo, in downtown Manhattan,
during the 1970s and 1980s, expressed his passions, both sacred and secular,
and shared his knowledge of the diverse cultural history of the United States.
1.
Monk Live, 2007
36” x 84”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.17
2. Art Blakey, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.25
3. Louis Armstrong Giggling, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.11
4. Billie Holiday in a Golden Dress, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.27
1.
Front
door
2.
11.
3.
10.
4.
9.
5.
8.
6.
7.
5.
Sonny Rollins, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.13
6. Albert King, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.10
7.
Wynton Marsalis, circa 2007
36” x 48” (unframed)
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.138
8. Sidney Bechet, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.14
9. Anita O'Day, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.22
10. Jelly, Jelly, Jelly, 2007
84” x 36”
Mixed media on canvas mounted on plywood
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. James Flach, EL.2009.29
11. Portrait of Tennessee Williams, 2008
48” x 32”
Acrylic on canvas
New Orleans Museum of Art, Gift of J. Michael Brown, 2010.225
Paul Gauguin (Impressionist Gallery)
In the context of “Prospect.3: Notes for Now,” with its strong
local presence in both themes and participants, the work of
Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) opens a window onto the
international. Inspired by Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer and
believing that the “search” undertaken by the novel’s central
character is relevant to all who search to understand
themselves in the world, Artistic Director Franklin Sirmans
has taken said search beyond the existential confines of the
self by including two pivotal artists. While Tarsila do Amaral
may have been searching for an identity to represent a
collective, Gauguin was searching for the self via the Other.
The title of Gauguin’s most famous painting, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where
Are We Going? (1897–98), anticipates the taking of the pulse that international biennial exhibitions, ideally, are all about. Prospect.3 aspires to take the pulse of the current moment, and to do
so in a way that highlights its specific location. But we live in an interconnected world, and we
want to hear the world, and to speak out in turn. Even Gauguin, a Frenchman in the nineteenth
century, did not have to stay put in Orléans, or even in Paris. “Born to a Peruvian mother,
Gauguin dreamed of returning to a civilization unsullied by industrialization and urban
problems.” A singular painting on glass doors in the collection of the New Orleans Museum Art,
Rupe Tahiti (literally, “Hurrah Tahiti!”), was purportedly made to keep out the prying eyes of
the artist’s French-born landlady. It dates to his first sojourn in Tahiti (1891–93). Here,
therefore, is the beginning of his search—or rather, a new beginning, as he had already tried
Martinique, in 1887. The scenes of women in foliage are typical of Gauguin’s work of the period,
as a lovely 1891 painting of in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Under the Pandanus (I
RaroteOviri), makes clear.
Under the Pandanus (I Raro te Oviri), 1891 (pictured)
Oil on canvas
38 ½” x 47 ¾” x 3 ½”
Dallas Museum of Art, Foundation for the Arts Collection,
gift of the Adele R. Levy Fund, Inc.
Pair of Doors: Rupe Tahiti, 1891-93
Oil on reverse-painted glass, painted beechwood
76 ¼ x 34 ¼”
New Orleans Museum of Art: The Knoedler Benefit Fund and Gift of Two Anonymous Donors, 1964.1
Tarsila do Amaral (Modernist Gallery)
The creation of a specifically Brazilian modernist aesthetic that
sought to reappropriate the country’s mestizo heritage and specific
environmental context was due, in large part, to Tarsila do Amaral
(Brazil, 1886–1973). Her work of the 1920s and 1930s, as it
pertains to the necessary hybridization of a New World identity, is
a precedent and touchstone for Prospect.3. Her study of Cubism
with Fernand Léger in Paris is evidenced in her use of geometric
forms and blocks of two-dimensional color, while her subject
matter—the brown faces, bodies, myths of her country—and her
colors (which some of her teachers saw as “too country”) insist on
the celebration, and what could perhaps be seen as the
autoexoticization, of Brazilian “otherness.”
Angels, 1924 (pictured)
Oil on canvas
33.66” x 28.54”
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museo do Arte Moderno Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, MAM RJ
Study for A Negra I, 1923
India ink on paper
8.66” x 6.69”
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museo do Arte Moderno Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, MAM RJ
Study for Antropofagia, 1929
Iron gallic ink on paper
9” x 7.68”
Gilberto Chateaubriand Collection, Museo do Arte Moderno Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, MAM RJ
Figura Femenina e Pássaros (Feminine Figure and Birds)
India ink on paper
7.48” x 5.12”
Patricia Schram Collection
Paisagem com uma casinha II (Landscape and small house II) (n.d.)
India ink on paper
11.02” x 14.57”
Private Collection
Andrea Fraser (Stern Auditorium)
Andrea Fraser is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work has been identified with performance,
feminism, context art and institutional critique. She has used a site-specific and research-based
approach to explore the motivations that drive artists, collectors, dealers, corporate sponsors,
museum trustees and museum visitors to engage with art, from the pursuit of prestige to
financial investment to sexual fantasy to self-realization.
While there clearly is a long history of discussion about race in New Orleans, it seems equally
clear that such conversations remain extremely difficult and have been rare in the city’s
mainstream art organizations. Andrea Fraser’s performance for NOMA seeks to place discussion
about race in one such New Orleans’ art institution. The performance involves locating a
recording of an interracial discussion about race in New Orleans that involves 3-6 participants
of both genders. Andrea will transcribe, internalize and perform all of the participants in the
discussion as a 40-50 minute solo performance. As a white northerner, Andrea Fraser attempts
to engage the legacies of slavery and racial division in the south, which are shared by all
Americans.
Live performance Saturday, October 25 @ 2pm. A video of the performance will be on
display at the Museum once the live event is complete.
Huguette Caland (Contemporary Gallery)
Born in Beirut, Huguette Caland (b. 1931) is celebrated as an
artist of Lebanon, France, and the United States, where she
now lives. During the construction of Caland’s Venice,
California, studio, she produced a series of biomorphic,
surrealistic nudes that she has acknowledged as autobiographical explorations of the physicality of the self. Having
less room to work during this period made it impossible for her
to produce her typically large canvases. She began creating
reduced-scale works on wood, where “faces and places from the
past came naturally.” Demonstrating the playful nature of her
work, Caland’s figurative works explore themes of narrative
expression with maximum simplicity as well as a tendency
toward unbridled obsession—elements that remain integral to
both her figurative and her nonfigurative practice.
Bribes de Corps, 1973 (pictured)
Oil on linen
60” x 60”
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
Kiss, 1968
Oil on canvas
37 ¾” x 41 ¼”
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
Huguette with Paul and Mustafa, 1970
Oil on linen
19 ½” x 39 ½”
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
Sunrise, 1973
Oil on linen
39 ½” x 39 ½”
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
Eux, 1978
Oil on linen
39 ½” x 39 ½”
Courtesy of the artist and Lombard Freid Gallery, New York
Ed Clark (Contemporary Gallery)
Ed Clark (b. New Orleans, 1926) was raised in Chicago and served in
World War II. He studied under the G.I. Bill at the Art Institute of
Chicago (1947-51) and L’Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris
(1952). Credited with creating and exhibiting America's first “shaped
canvas”, and known for using the push broom as a brush, Clark is
considered one of the most prominent African American Abstract
Expressionists. If there is an important “recovery” to be acknowledged
in Clark’s work, it is thus not the revival of abstraction but the
historical reassessment of a black abstract painter whose career has at
times been overshadowed both by better-known black figurative
painters and by the mostly white (and mostly male) practitioners of
Abstract Expressionism and Post-Painterly Abstraction. Yet paradoxically, the longevity of Clark’s career means that even as we reevaluate
his significance for history, his work is also eminently contemporary.
New Orleans Series #4, 2012 (pictured)
Acrylic on canvas
53” x 66”
Courtesy Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans
Louisiana Red, 2004
Acrylic on canvas
67” x 72”
Collection of Arthur Primas
Southern Lights (Louisiana Series), 1978
Pencil and pastel on paper
29 ½” x 41 ½”
Collection Peg Alston, New York
Jeffrey Gibson
Jeffrey Gibson is a painter, sculptor, and installation artist living in
Hudson, New York. He received an MA from the Royal College of Art,
London, and a BFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago.
In 1941, months before the U.S. entered World War II, the Museum of
Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition called Indian Art of the
United States. The entire first floor of the exhibition framed the then
contemporary artworks as ‘Indian Art for Modern Living,’ thus positing
an expanded depiction of modern art, progressively comprehensive for
the 1940s. The significant embrace of alterity expressed by the MoMA
exhibition and its relevance to contemporary culture seemed to quickly
subside with the onset of the war. The gap widened between the established canon of modern art
and its inclusion of Native American artists, and the burgeoning postwar Native American art
world went on to define an independent trajectory, separate from more mainstream 20th
century arts and cultural discourses. Seventy-seven years later, with the works presented at
NOMA Jeffrey Gibson imagines where this dialogue may have led if parallel advancements
continued, and these aesthetic and conceptual histories perhaps even merged. Gibson is a
member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and is half Cherokee. He grew up with the
knowledge of obvious Native American stereotypes, manifested in mass produced “Indian”
totem poles, and symbols representing Indian warriors, chiefs, and maidens. For Gibson, such
cliché formats are not representative of Native American culture, but do provide strategies for a
critique of cultural value and representation.
Integrating materials, processes, and
commissioned objects, Gibson began working with these in tandem with the formal, abstract
languages common to his work, equally influenced by being Native, queer, urban, and also by
the communities he forged, both local and peripheral. Objects commissioned to traditional
Native American artists join Gibson’s hybrid sculptures thus reflecting the relationship between
the local, the regional, and the global. Included in the exhibition are beadwork pieces by
Whitney Minthorn and Frankie Skye Hawk that make reference to Gibson’s paintings; drums
made by GenderQueer artist and dancer Jesse McMann-Sparvier, a quilt by Mary Felicia, handpainted by Gibson; Booger Masks by Roger Cain that are presented alongside sculptural works
made by Gibson.
Balls, 2012
Beaded balls (made by Frankie Sky Hawk based on paintings by Jeffrey Gibson), rawhide lacing, artificial sinew,
wooden balls, buckskin, and glass beads
Variable dimensions
Courtesy of Samsøn, Boston, MA & MARC STRAUS, New York
Silver Log and Blanket #2, 2011-12
Acrylic paint on wool blanket, acrylic paint, log (Black Locust), steel nails, tin caps, rawhide, artificial sinew, and
steel cable
Approx.. 62” x 48” x 37”
Courtesy of Samsøn, Boston, MA & MARC STRAUS, New York
Booger, 2011-12
Booger mask by Roger Cain, Black Locust tree, goat hide, digital C-print, steel, artificial sinew
Approx. 120” x 72” x 72“
Courtesy of Samsøn, Boston, MA & MARC STRAUS, New York
Flag, 2011-12
Wool blanket, acrylic paint, copper pipe and steel hardware
96” x 72” x 6”
Collection of Fotene Demoulas and Tom Cote, Boston, MA
Promised Gift to Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston
Horse, 2011-12
Wool blanket, acrylic paint, 7 German silver engraved medallions (made by Jhon Duane Goes In Center), recycled
wooden construction barrier
14” x 65” x 50”
Courtesy of Samsøn, Boston, MA & MARC STRAUS, New York
Quiver, 2012
Deer hide, artificial sinew, beaded balls (made by Frankie Skye Hawk), neon tube light
Approx. 50” x 40” x 3”
Courtesy of Samsøn, Boston, MA & MARC STRAUS, New York
Here It Comes, 2014
Deer rawhide, glass and plastic beads, wool blanket, beetle wings,
Artist’ s own repurposed painting, artificial sinew, Drusy quartz,
steel and brass studs
37 1/2 x 13 1/2 x 6 1/2 inches
Believe Believe!, 2014
Found canvas punching bag, glass and plastic beads, artificial sinew,
steel studs, acrylic paint, wool military blanket, nylon fringe,
copper jingles, steel chain
67 x 16 x 16 inches
Alma Thomas (Contemporary Gallery)
Alma Thomas (b. 1891, Columbus, Georgia; d. 1978, Washington, D.C.)
was raised in Georgia and moved with her family during high school to
a less racially segregated Washington D.C. She was the first student to
graduate from Howard University’s Art Program and went on to teach
art at Shaw Junior High School for 35 years. When Thomas retired in
1960 at the age of 69, she returned to college to study painting at
American University in D.C.
While Thomas has been seen as a precursor to the Washington Color School (sharing its interest
in color, geometry, optical effects), her work sits apart due to the spontaneity and mutability of
her process. Her work is characterized by block shaped brushstrokes of color lined up like
mosaic tiling arranged in dense bands of columns covering the scope of the canvas on a
background of different colors or no paint at all. Her brushstrokes were often intended to mimic
nature and she used her garden as inspiration and named the paintings after the flowers and
trees she saw in the parks around her home. The look could seem spontaneous but Thomas was
known to have made over 20 watercolor studies before executing her final work on canvas. Her
paintings are a mixture of momentary inspiration, thoughtful and careful patterning and
crafting.
Alma Thomas’s life is marked by a series of firsts. Thomas was the first woman to graduate from
Howard University’s Fine Art department and the first to receive a Masters in Fine Arts
Education from Columbia University. In 1972 she became the first African American woman to
have her own show at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her importance as an artist not
only lies in her vibrant visual work but in her groundbreaking achievements as an African
American female artist.
Azaleas in Spring, 1968 (pictured)
Oil on canvas
20” x 24”
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York
Carnival of Autumn Leaves, 1973
Oil on canvas
50” x 50”
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York
Dogwood Display II, 1972
Acrylic on canvas
45 ½” x 27”
The New Orleans Museum of Art: Gift of Elizabeth R. French