After winning acclaim and record attendance on a four-year international and domestic tour, The Phillips Collection’s American art treasures will make a grand homecoming in February 2014 in a landmark exhibition titled Made in the USA.
The most comprehensive presentation of the museum’s American art collection undertaken in nearly 40 years, Made in the USA showcases more than 200 masterpieces—from romantic seascapes and jazzy city scenes to abstract canvases and boldly colored portraits—by more than 125 artists whose new visual language made American art an international sensation.
Organized chronologically as a thematic narrative about American art from the late 19th century through the postwar years, the exhibition aims to demonstrate how artists with fresh vision and independent spirit captured modern American life.
Highlights include
Edward Hopper, Sunday, 1926. Oil on canvas, 29 x 34 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington. DC. Acquired 1926
Willem De Kooning, Asheville, 1948. Oil and enamel on cardboard 25 9/16 x 31 7/8 in. Acquired 1952. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC © 2013 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Arthur Dove, Red Sun, 1935. Oil on canvas, 20 1/4 x 28 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1935
Stefan Hirsch, New York, Lower Manhattan, 1921. Oil on canvas,
29 x 34 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1925
Winslow Homer, To the Rescue, 1886. Oil on canvas, 24 x 30 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1926
Rockwell Kent, The Road Roller, 1909. Oil on canvas, 34 1/8 x 44 1/4 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1918
John Marin, Pertaining to Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street, 1933. Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1937 © 2013 Estate of John Marin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Georgia O'Keeffe, Ranchos Church, No. II, NM, 1929. Oil on canvas, 24 1/8 x 36 1/8 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1930
Horace Pippin, Domino Players, 1943. Oil on composition board, 12 3/4 x 22 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1943
Allen Tucker, The Rise, not dated. Oil on canvas, 30 1/2 x 36 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Acquired 1927
CATALOGUE
Made in the U.S.A: American Art from The Phillips Collection, 1850–1970
Edited by Susan Behrends Frank; with an essay by Eliza E. Rathbone
The Phillips Collection’s superb collection of American art, acquired over half a century, is presented here for the first time in a comprehensive overview, featuring 160 works from heroes of the late 19th century—such as William Merritt Chase, Thomas Eakins, and Winslow Homer, who set the course for modern art in America—to abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Adolph Gottlieb, and Mark Rothko, whose efforts to create a new visual language following World War II brought a new global significance to American art. A perennial guide to this important collection, the book includes scholarly essays on Phillips and on the Rothko Room, introductions to key groups of works in the collection, more than one hundred biographies of the most influential artists represented, and a chronology of Phillip's acquisitions and interactions with American artists.
# ISBN-13: 9780300196153
# Publisher: Yale University Press
# Publication date: 1/28/2014
276 pages
From a review of the Madrid exhibit:
The itinerary of the exhibition is divided into ten thematic areas, detailed below, chronologically covering 100 years of American art, although necessarily some overlap in time. Thus we see Romanticism, Realism and Impressionism, forces of nature, abstraction (of special interest is work by Arthur Dove and Georgia O´Keffe) modern life and its corollary, the city (let yourself be amazed here by Edward Hopper, Pierre de Bois, John Sloan, and the aesthetic details of Charles Sheeler), Memory and identity (with several of the panels of the seminal series on African-American Migration by Jacob Lawrence), the Heritage of Cubism, ending with abstraction (best represented by an exquisite, small Rothko) culminating in abstract expressionism.
Images from Madrid:
Mark Rothko
Untitled
1968
60,5 x 47,6 cm
© 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel and
Christopher Rothko / VEGAP / Madrid,
2010
Richard Diebenkorn
Girl with Plant
1960
203,2 x 176,5 cm
© The Estate of Richard Diebenkorn
Georgia O’Keeffe
Large Dark Red Leaves on White
1925
81,3 x 53,3 cm
© Georgia O’Keeffe Museum /
VEGAP / Madrid, 2010
Edward Hopper
Approaching a City
1946
Stuart Davis
Egg Beater No. 4
1928
© Stuart Davis, VEGAP, Madrid, 2010
ABOUT THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION
The Phillips Collection is one of the world’s most distinguished collections of impressionist and modern American and European art. Stressing the continuity between art of the past and present, it offers a strikingly original and experimental approach to modern art by combining works of different nationalities and periods in displays that change frequently. The setting is similarly unconventional, featuring small rooms, a domestic scale, and a personal atmosphere. Artists represented in the collection include Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Paul Klee, Claude Monet, Honoré Daumier, Georgia O’Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery, Jacob Lawrence, and Richard Diebenkorn, among others. The Phillips Collection, America’s first museum of modern art, has an active collecting program and regularly organizes acclaimed special exhibitions, many of which travel internationally. The Intersections series features projects by contemporary artists, responding to art and spaces in the museum. The Phillips also produces award-winning education programs for K–12 teachers and students, as well as for adults. The museum’s Center for the Study of Modern Art explores new ways of thinking about art and the nature of creativity, through artist visits and lectures, and provides a forum for scholars through courses, postdoctoral fellowships, and internships. Since 1941, the museum has hosted Sunday Concerts in its wood-paneled Music Room. The Phillips Collection is a private, non-government museum, supported primarily by donations.
