TRANCE-Rebecca Rupel, Tracy Tran and Colleen Wei
March 2, 2015 @ 5:00 pm – March 5, 2015 @ 7:00 pm, Phyllis Gill Gallery
Monthly Archives: February 2015
The Provoke Era: Japanese Photography from the Collection of SFMOMA
February 28, 2015 @ 6:00 pm – 9:00 pm, California Museum of Photography
Named for the magazine Provoke, which sought to break the rules of traditional photography, this exhibition presents the avant-garde tradition that emerged in Tokyo in the 1960s and continued in the 70s and 80s. The exhibition traces Japanese photographers’ responses to their country’s shifting social and political atmosphere. The influence of Provoke photography in Japan continues today. The Provoke Era features work by internationally recognized artists including Masahisa Fukase, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, and Shomei Tomatsu.
The Provoke Era is organized by SFMOMA, and is curated by Sandra S. Phillips, SFMOMA senior curator of photography. The exhibition is made possible by The James Irvine Foundation, Bank of America, and The Japan Foundation.
Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Wong Ju
February 24, 2015
Wong Ju
Date/Time: Tuesday, at 4:10pm
Location: Arts 335
Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Eve Fowler
February 17, 2015
Eve Fowler
Date/Time: Tuesday, at 4:10pm
Location: Arts 335
The Marble Index: Roubiliac and Sculptural Portraiture in Eighteenth-Century Britain
2015, New Haven and London: Yale University Press
Providing the first thorough study of sculptural portraiture in 18th-century Britain, this important book challenges both the idea that portrait necessarily implies painting and the assumption that Enlightenment thought is manifest chiefly in French art. By considering the bust and the statue as genres, Malcolm Baker, a leading sculpture scholar, addresses the question of how these seemingly traditional images developed into ambitious forms of representation within a culture in which many core concepts of modernity were being formed. The leading sculptor at this time in Britain was Louis Francois Roubiliac (1702–1762), and his portraits of major figures of the day, including Alexander Pope, Isaac Newton, and George Frederic Handel, are examined here in detail. Remarkable for their technical virtuosity and visual power, these images show how sculpture was increasingly being made for close and attentive viewing. The Marble Index eloquently establishes that the heightened aesthetic ambition of the sculptural portrait was intimately linked with the way in which it could engage viewers familiar with Enlightenment notions of perception and selfhood.
Fame and Friendship: Pope, Roubiliac and the Portrait Bust in Eighteenth-Century Britain
2014, London: Paul Holberton Publishing
No literary figure of the 18th-century was more esteemed than the poet Alexander Pope, and his sculpted portraits exemplify the celebration of literary fame at a period when authorship was being newly conceived and the portrait bust was enjoying new popularity. Accompanying an exhibition at Waddesdon Manor (The Rothschild Collection), this publication explores the convergence between authorship, portraiture, and the sculpted image in particular, by bringing together a wide range of works that foreground Pope’s celebrity status.
Pope took great pains over how he was represented and carefully fashioned his public persona through images, published letters and the printed editions of his works. Examined alongside some of the most celebrated painted portraits of the poet, will be a selection of the printed texts which Pope planned with meticulous care. The core of the publication will consist of eight different versions of the same portrait bust by the leading sculptor of the period, Louis François Roubiliac. Read More →