“Art in America: Three Hundred Years of Innovation,” the largest and most comprehensive exhibition of American art to travel to Russia, will be on view at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts July 24⁓eptember 9.
The presentation of this landmark exhibition, which premiered earlier this year in Beijing and Shanghai, is presented under the patronage of Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State of the United States of America, and Sergey Lavrov, minister of foreign affairs of the Russian Federation, in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of the start of diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States.
Drawn from several dozen museums and collections in Europe and America, the exhibition presents approximately 100 works by artists who hold an important place in America’s art history, and systematically outlines the developments of the last 300 years, from the colonial period of the Eighteenth Century to the present.
Following the Pushkin Museum presentation, the exhibition will travel to Bilbao, Spain, where it will be on view from October 10 to early 2008, as part of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao’s tenth anniversary celebrations.
Divided into six historical periods, the exhibition demonstrates how the art of each era both reflected and contributed to a complex visual narrative of the nation during times of discovery, growth and experimentation. The exhibition explores issues of identity, creation, innovation and scale †characteristics integral to the American consciousness and derived in part from the variety and vastness of the cultural, political, ethnic, economic and natural landscapes of the United States.
The six sections, each marking significant phases of the country’s development, are: Colonization and Rebellion (1700‱830), Expansion and Fragmentation (1830‸0), Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism (1880‱915), Modernism and Regionalism (1915‴5), Prosperity and Disillusionment (1945-80), and Multiculturalism and Globalization (1980⁰resent).
Featured artists include, among many others, John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, George Catlin, Frederic Edwin Church, Winslow Homer, Martin Johnson Heade, John Singer Sargent, Albert Bierstadt, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Frederic Remington, Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, George Bellows, Charles Demuth, Georgia O’Keeffe, Stuart Davis, Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, James Rosenquist, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Brice Marden, Chuck Close, Lawrence Weiner, Richard Prince, Jean-Michel Basquiat and John Currin.
Included among the many highlights of the exhibition are Charles Willson Peale’s “George Washington (circa 1780‸2, Walton Family Foundation), George Caleb Bingham’s “Daniel Boone Escorting Settlers through the Cumberland Gap” (1851‵2, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, Washington University, St Louis), Asher B. Durand’s “A Symbol” (1856, Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga), Henry Inman’s “Yoholo-Micco” (1832″3, High Museum of Art, Atlanta), Edward P. Moran’s “The Unveiling of the Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World” (1886, Museum of the City of New York).
Also, Marsden Hartley’s “Painting No. 50” (1914‱5, Terra Foundation for American Art), Edward Hopper’s “Corn Hill (Truro, Cape Cod)” (1930, Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, San Antonio), Jackson Pollock’s “The Moon-Woman” (1942, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice), Willem de Kooning’s “Composition” (1955, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Andy Warhol’s “Orange Disaster” (1963, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Ed Ruscha’s “The Back of Hollywood” (1977, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon), and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s “Man from Naples” (1982, Guggenheim Museum Bilbao).
The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts is at 12 Volkhonka Street. For information, www.museum.ru/gmii/defengl.htm or 495 202 8481.
