Kandinsky: A Retrospective September 26, 2014–January 4, 2015

Kandinsky Retrospective Brings Modern Masterworks from the Centre Pompidou–Paris to the Frist Center

The Frist Center for the Visual Arts presents Kandinsky: A Retrospective, an exhibition celebrating a lifetime of work by Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) in the Center’s Ingram Gallery from September 26, 2014–January 4, 2015. Chronicling four decades of artistic evolution—from early figurative works to exuberant experiments in abstraction and color—this exhibition invites visitors on an extraordinary stylistic journey of one of the most innovative modern art masters of the twentieth century.

Kandinsky: A Retrospective is drawn largely from the collection of the Centre Pompidou–Paris, and features more than 100 paintings, drawings and other works. A majority of these stunning works were part of the artist’s personal collection and were given by the artist’s widow, Nina. Additional paintings from the Milwaukee Art Museum, including works by Gabriele Münter, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, further an appreciation of the artist in the context of his contemporaries.

Organized chronologically and spanning the artist’s periods in Russia, Germany and France, the exhibition begins with paintings from the early 1900s including landscapes, painted folk tales and figurative works. “These works show how the young artist was influenced by major styles such as Art Nouveau, Impressionism, Symbolism, and Post-Impressionism,” says Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala. In a period of experimentation and movement towards more symbolic work, Kandinsky and other like-minded artists founded Der Blaue Reiter (the Blue Rider) in 1911, a group of artists based in Munich who emphasized the expression of extreme psychological conditions in their art. “Kandinsky made a radical move away from recognizable subject matter in the belief that painting’s most important property was its capacity to dissolve the outside world and evoke inner conditions,” says Mr. Scala.

Kandinsky felt that music has the capacity to induce spiritual feelings within listeners through its formal arrangement of melodic sounds, harmonies and rhythms. He believed that “painters could similarly ‘orchestrate’ the elements of art—color, form, and line—to trigger pure emotional experiences,” says Mr. Scala. In the theoretical treatise Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Kandinsky wrote that “color is the keyboard. The eye is the hammer, while the soul is a piano of many strings. The artist is the hand through which the medium of different keys causes the human soul to vibrate.”

In 1914, Kandinsky returned to Russia, his country of birth, and married Nina Andreevskaya in 1917. Facing financial hardship and material shortage during World War I and the Russian Revolution, his artistic output was somewhat limited. However, the paintings that Kandinsky did complete, some marking a return to Impressionism, further demonstrated his belief that art should comfort and convey inner meaning rather than provoke and express political views, as other avant-garde Russian artists believed.

Back in Germany during a period of heady intellectualism in the 1920s at the Bauhaus, a highly influential German art school, Kandinsky favored geometric works and created monumental decors, including the large scale mural panels he and his students designed for the Juryfreie Kunstschau—Berlin (Non-juried Art Exhibition—Berlin). The panels, built for a never-realized museum lounge, were intended to immerse the viewer in a complete aesthetic experience. A 1977 reconstruction of this room is a highlight of this exhibition, and as Kandinsky initially desired, lets “the viewer ‘stroll’ within the picture.” In stark contrast with the rigid geometry of the Bauhaus period, Kandinsky’s paintings from the end of his life and career in France are recognized for their joyful use of biomorphic forms, which reflect the influence of Parisian light and nature as well as Surrealism.

Exhibition Credit
Kandinsky: A Retrospective is organized by the Centre Pompidou—Paris and the Milwaukee Art Museum.
Sponsor Acknowledgment
Platinum Sponsor: The HCA Foundation on behalf of HCA and TriStar Health
Silver Sponsors: Anne and Joe Russell
Hospitality Sponsor: Union Station Hotel
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
The Frist Center for the Visual Arts is supported in part by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Exhibition Catalogue
The exhibition is accompanied by a 202-page illustrated catalogue distributed for the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Milwaukee Art Museum by Yale University Press.

Related Public Programs

Friday, September 26 
Community Opening: Kandinsky: A Retrospective and Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible
10:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m.
Free  

Celebrate the opening of two new exhibitions, Kandinsky: A Retrospective and Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible, during our Community Opening. This event is free and open to the public. A cash bar and hors d’oeuvres will be available in the Frist Center’s Grand Lobby from 6:00–8:30 p.m. Remarks will begin at 7:00 p.m. in the Frist Center Auditorium. RSVP by Monday, September 15 by calling 615.744.3987 or membership@fristcenter.org. Join us!

Friday, September 26   
Curator’s Perspective: Kandinsky: A Retrospective Presented by Angela Lampe, curator, Centre Pompidou
Frist Center Auditorium   
12:00 p.m.
Free
There are not many artists who successively adopted three nationalities during their lives.Wassily Kandinsky was born in Russia, achieved renown as a pioneer of abstraction and as a teacher at the Bauhaus art school in Germany, and settled in Paris where he was buried as a French citizen in 1944. In each country, in each context, he found new inspiration for his art. This lecture provides a journey through the life and work of one of the great masters of modern art. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from September 26, 2014–January 4, 2015.

Tuesday, October 7   
Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.
Frist Center Auditorium
Free with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission included. Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, September 16; call Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community, Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought: Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Mark your calendars for our next lectures on Tuesday, November 4 and Tuesday, December 2. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Thursday, October 9
Curator’s Tour: Kandinsky: A Retrospective Presented by Mark Scala, chief curator, Frist Center
12:00 p.m.    
Meet at exhibition entrance 
Gallery admission required; members free
Join Frist Center Chief Curator Mark Scala on a tour of Kandinsky: A Retrospective as he explores the work of this influential Russian painter and art theorist throughout his long career.

Sunday, October 19 
Artful Tales: “Little Logan Golden Eye”
2:00–3:00 p.m.
Frist Center Auditorium/Studios
Free; seating is first come, first seated
Artful Tales is a FREE family program geared toward everyone ages three and up! Listen and play along as an art-related story comes to life. Then, head upstairs to the art studio and make an artwork that relates to the story.
Enjoy this gentle, original story about a long-awaited child, a magical fiddle, and the power of believing in yourself and the gifts that you are given. Afterwards, make paintings that explore the connections between color and music. This program complements the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective.

Tuesday, November 4   
Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.
Frist Center Auditorium
Free with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission included. Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, October 14; call Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community, Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought: Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Mark your calendars for the final lecture on Tuesday, December 2. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Thursday, November 6   
Lecture: “Understanding Kandinsky in His Early Twentieth Century Context” Frist Center Auditorium  Presented by Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Ph.D., David Bruton, Jr., Centennial Professor in Art History and Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Professor, The University of Texas, Austin
6:30 p.m.        
Gallery admission required; members free         

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky was one of the major pioneers in the emergence of totally abstract painting—art without recognizable subject matter. Kandinsky believed that, by communicating through color and form rather than by subject matter, art could achieve a higher level of spirituality. In an effort to have a transformative artistic effect upon his audience, Kandinsky grounded this quest in contemporary scientific ideas and discoveries such as radioactivity. This lecture, presented in conjunction with the exhibition Kandinsky: A Retrospective, will explore the cultural context in which Kandinsky worked and place the artist within this important historical moment. Find more lecture details at http://www.fristcenter.org.

Friday, November 14   
ARTini: Kandinsky: A Retrospective
7:00 p.m.
Meet at exhibition entrance
Gallery admission required; members free
Are you curious about art? Do you want to learn more about the content and concepts behind an artist’s work? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then the ARTini program is for you! ARTinis are designed for everyone—from the novice to the connoisseur—and include informal and insightful conversations that offer a deeper understanding of one or two works of art in an exhibition. Join Frist Center Associate Curator of Interpretation Megan Robertson as she explores a few of the works of this influential Russian painter and art theorist.

Tuesday, November 18   
ARTini: Kandinsky: A Retrospective
12:00 p.m.
Meet at exhibition entrance
Gallery admission required; members free
Are you curious about art? Do you want to learn more about the content and concepts behind an artist’s work? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then the ARTini program is for you! ARTinis are designed for everyone—from the novice to the connoisseur—and include informal and insightful conversations that offer a deeper understanding of one or two works of art in an exhibition. Join Frist Center Associate Curator of Interpretation Megan Robertson as she explores a few of the works of this influential Russian painter and art theorist.

Thursday, November 20 
Performance: “Blue-Yellow-Red” Presented by Robbie Hunsinger and Missy Raines
6:30 p.m.
Rechter Room
Gallery admission required; members free
Seating is first come, first seated
Interdisciplinary artist and transmedia performer Robbie Lynn Hunsinger will present an original composition inspired by the art and writings of Wassily Kandinsky that explores synesthesia and the interconnectedness of music, visual art and the senses. Hunsinger’s multimedia concert piece complements the motives and visual materials of her concurrent interactive installation, Blue-Yellow-Red, on view in the Frist Center’s Rechter Room from November 13–21, 2014. Virtuoso bassist Missy Raines will join multi-instrumentalist Hunsinger for this premiere performance of “Blue-Yellow-Red” for acoustic instruments, laptop, and projector.

Tuesday, December 2 
Lecture Series: “Food for Thought”
11:30 a.m.–1:00 p.m.
Lunch begins at 11:30 a.m. with lecture to follow at noon.
Frist Center Auditorium
Free with advance registration; lunch and gallery admission included. Registration for this lecture opens Tuesday, November 11; call Vanderbilt University at 615.322.8585 to register.
In partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Office of Community, Neighborhood, and Government Relations, “Food for Thought: Kandinsky―Exploring Connections between Music and the Visual Arts,” is a three-part lecture series presented by Vanderbilt professors, Frist Center curators, and members of the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. This series provides the community at large with an opportunity to build challenging intellectual connections to the exhibition  Kandinsky: A Retrospective. Visit http://www.fristcenter.org for lecture details. Kandinsky: A Retrospective is on view in the Ingram Gallery from Friday, September 26, 2014, to Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Thomas Hart Benton’s Epic Mural America Today on View at Met Museum Beginning September 30

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) City Activities with Dancehall from America Today, 1930–31. Mural cycle consisting of ten panels. Egg tempera with oil glazing over Permalba on a gesso ground on linen mounted to wood panels with a honeycomb interior. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of AXA Equitable, 2012
 Exhibition Dates: September 30, 2014–April 19, 2015

The exhibition Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered celebrates the gift of Thomas Hart Benton’s epic mural America Today from AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in December 2012. Missouri native Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) painted the 10-panel mural cycle in 1930–31 for New York’s New School for Social Research to adorn the boardroom of its International Style modernist building on West 12th Street. It was commissioned by the New School’s director, Alvin Johnson, who had fashioned the school as a center for progressive thought and education in Greenwich Village. Depicting a sweeping panorama of American life during the 1920s, America Today ranks among Benton’s most renowned works and as one of the most significant accomplishments in American art of the period.

“This exhibition is the culmination of an extraordinary partnership between the Metropolitan and AXA, which donated the mural to the Museum and also serves as the exhibition’s sponsor. For this, we are tremendously grateful,” stated Thomas P. Campbell, Director and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum.  “The Metropolitan’s presentation of Benton’s great mural will shed new light on this visually and intellectually stimulating landmark in American art of the early 1930s, especially as the Museum will display the mural as the artist originally intended it to be seen.  Positioning the mural’s new home in the context of the Metropolitan’s diverse collections, the exhibition also tells a unique story rooted in New York’s own cultural history.”

“The Department of Modern and Contemporary Art is thrilled to debut AXA’s great gift of Benton’s remarkable America Today mural in the American Wing, where the artist’s expansive vision of life in the United States will resonate deeply with John Vanderlyn’s grand panorama, 19th-century genre painting, and Thomas Cole’s philosophical landscapes, among other treasures,” said Sheena Wagstaff, the Museum’s Leonard A. Lauder Chairman of Modern and Contemporary Art.  “The exhibition will also remind visitors that the key themes of Benton’s mural—the heroic proletariat and modern industry—were greatly significant for artists in a contemporary international context, not only in the United States, but also in Mexico, and in France between the world wars.”

The exhibition is made possible by AXA.

America Today was Benton’s first major mural commission and the most ambitious he ever executed in New York City. The exhibition will demonstrate how the work not only marked a turning point in Benton’s career as a painter—elevating his stature among his peers and critics—but in hindsight stands out even more as a singular achievement of American art of the period, one that, among other effects, served to legitimize modern mural painting as part of the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Arts Project in the 1930s. Stylistically bold, America Today stands midway between the artist’s early experiments in abstraction, signs of which are still evident in the mural, and the expressive figurative style for which he is best known today. Thematically, the mural evokes the ebullient belief in American progress that was characteristic of the 1920s, even as it acknowledges the onset of economic distress that would characterize life in the following decade. The commissioning of America Today also marked an important episode in international modernism; the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco was commissioned to paint a mural in the New School at the same time, and the two
artists worked on their projects concurrently.

On view starting September 30 in the Museum’s Erving and Joyce Wolf Gallery in the American Wing, the exhibition will be organized into three sections: the first will feature a large selection of Benton’s studies for the mural; the second will present the mural installed in a facsimile of its original space at the New School; and the third will feature related works by other artists, all from the Museum’s collection.

America Today Rediscovered
The keystone of the exhibition—the mural—will be installed in a reconstruction of the 30-by-22-foot boardroom as it existed at the New School in 1931, allowing viewers to experience the mural cycle as Benton conceived it. A highlight of this extraordinary opportunity to view the reconstructed mural in its nearly original setting is the incorporation of elements that were part of the architect Joseph Urban’s modernist aesthetic for the New School building, such as the black and red color scheme he used for the room. Among the mural’s most distinctive features are the aluminum-leaf wooden moldings, which not only frame the mural but also create inventive spatial breaks within each large panel. When the mural was installed at the New School, these moldings echoed the Art Deco details of Urban’s building design.

The 10 panels—most of which loom to a height of seven-and-a-half feet—depict a panoramic sweep of rural and urban life on the eve of the Great Depression. They capture the tension of early modern America, with allusions to race relations and social values, while simultaneously celebrating the themes of industry, progress, and urban life. An array of pre-Depression types—flappers, farmers, steel workers, stock market tycoons, and others representing a cross section of American life—will surround visitors in the mural space and can be further explored in the adjacent galleries, which will present many of the studies Benton made during his travels around the United States in the 1920s and to which he referred for the mural project.

The Mural Studies
The second section of the exhibition, featuring Benton’s studies for America Today, illuminates the deliberative nature of his working process. Besides the impressions Benton captured during his travels around the U.S. in the 1920s, the studies on view will include character studies in pencil for figures that appear in the mural, as well as painted compositional studies for individual mural panels.

Related Works
The final section of the exhibition includes works that relate to Benton’s America Today drawn from the Metropolitan Museum’s Departments of Modern and Contemporary Art, Photographs, and European Paintings. Highlights of this section are other works by Benton; renowned photographs by Walker Evans, Berenice Abbott, and Lewis Hine; and, of particular interest, Jackson Pollock’s Pasiphaë (1943). During the time Benton was painting America Today, Pollock was his student and served as a model for his teacher’s mural. The inclusion of Pollock’s abstract painting in the exhibition provides opportunities to consider the complex personal and artistic relationship between the two artists.

From the New School to the Metropolitan
After more than 50 years in the boardroom of the New School, a space that was subsequently used as a classroom, America Today proved difficult for the school to maintain in perpetuity. In 1982, the school announced the sale of the mural cycle to the Manhattan art dealer Maurice Segoura, with the condition that it would not be re-sold outside the United States or as individual panels. But the work was a great challenge to sell as a whole, increasing the likelihood that the panels would be dispersed.

America Today was acquired by AXA (then Equitable Life) in 1984, in support of efforts on the part of then-Mayor Edward I. Koch and others to keep it intact and in New York City. Two years later, after extensive cleaning and restoration, America Today was unveiled to critical acclaim in AXA’s new headquarters at 787 Seventh Avenue. When the company moved its corporate headquarters again in 1996, to 1290 Avenue of the Americas, America Today was put on display in the lobby. There it remained until January 2012, when the company was asked to remove it to make way for a renovation. The removal triggered AXA’s decision to place the historic work in a museum collection, and in December 2012, AXA donated the mural to the Metropolitan Museum. This transformative gift was facilitated by H. Barbara Weinberg, Curator Emerita, The American Wing, and Pari Stave, Senior Administrator in the Museum’s Department of Modern and Contemporary Art.

More information about the 2012 gift can be found in the Press Room on the Museum’s website.

Exhibition Credits
Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today Mural Rediscovered is organized by Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, the Alice Pratt Brown Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture, and Randall Griffey, Associate Curator in the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art, both of the Metropolitan Museum.

Related Programs
A variety of education programs will take place in conjunction with the exhibition. These include gallery talks, a one-day symposium on March 2, 2015, a Sunday at the Met lecture, and a scholars’ day workshop event. A Musical Tribute to Thomas Hart Benton with jazz pianist Orrin Evans and the Captain Black Big Band will take place on February 20, 2015.

Related Publication
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Bulletin published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Featuring essays by curators Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser and Randall Griffey, it will be available in February 2015.