Portraits, Plots, and Places: The Permanent

Exhibitions Gallery Guide
EI
Andy Warhol
16 Jackies 1964
acrylic, enamel on canvas
Collection Walker Art Center
Art Center Acquisition Fund, 1968
Carrie Mae Weems
Untitled 1990
three silver prints
Collection Walker Art Center
Rollwagen/Cray Research Photography Fund, 1991
Portraits, Plots, and Places:
The Permanent Collection Revisited
Galleries 4, 5, and 6 Opens January 7
A new installation of works from the Walker Art
Center's permanent collection opens on Tuesday, January 7. Rather than presenting a chronology of developments in 20th-century art, the
installation is organized by theme and by clusters
of works by individual artists. The effort is to
encourage new ways of looking across generations and among media. Included in addition to
paintings and sculptures are drawings, photographs, prints, multiples, artists' books, models,
video works, and a mm installation. A number of
new acquisitions are on view for the first time, as
are many exemplary and favorite works familiar
to Walker visitors. Every 18 months some clusters will be removed, and others will be added.
Alberto Giacometti
Buste di Diego (Bust of Diego) circa 1954
bronze
Collection Walker Art Center
Gift of the T. B. Walker Foundation, 1957
physical and perceptual experience of the work
itself, are joined in the gallery by later paintings of
the 1970s by Brice Marden and Agnes Martin.
Sculptures by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, and
Fred Sandback clarify the essential link between
Minimalism and architecture - the shared space
between the object and the viewer.
In an adjoining room, Edward Hopper's Office at
Night (1940) sets the stage for a group of works in
which the viewer becomes a voyeur into private
tableaux. A recent untitled photographic triptych boY Carrie Mae Weems depicts a black
woman and a black man posed in a domestic
setting in an exploration of the shifting ambigu- ities of a personal relationship. GeOl:ge Segats
In the first room (in Gallery 4) color is the key sculptural setting The Diner (1964 - 1966) is
element linking four masterpieces of early 20th- offset by a large pastel-and-charcoal drawcentury modernism with color-field works from ing by Michelle Zalopany of an empty resthe 1960s and 1970s. Paintings by Lyonel taurant. Amixed-mediaenvironmentbyEdward
Feininger, Stanton Mac donald -Wright, Franz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, surrealistic and inMarc, and Joseph Stella, in which radiant color trospective, finds a counterpoint in a videotape
provides a symbolic and visionary underpinning by Minneapolis artist Bruce Charlesworth in
to representation, contrast with a monumental which a melodrama has gone zanily mad.
abstract painting by Morris Louis and prints by
Helen Frankenthaler in which the saturation and Several works by Louise Nevelson, including the
flow of color highlight the supple materiality of room-scale, all-black wall construction Sky
paint and canvas .
Cathedral Presence (1951-1964), are grouped in
a Single gallery to show not only the depth in
An adjacent room features works by Mark Rothko, which this artist's work is represented in the
including paintings presented to the Walker by collection but also its relationship to architecture.
the Rothko Foundation in 1985 and 1986, as well Joseph Cornell's box Andromeda (Sand Fountain)
as a recent gift of a painting from 1955. In his use (1953 -1956) is an intriguing example of whatthe
of color, Rothko, a central figure of Abstract artist called "philosophical toys," in which the
Expressionism, shares both the sublime aspira- interior space is likened to the spectator's dream
tions of early modernism and the concerns for the world. Two other surrealistic assemblages, by
integrity of materials typical of later contempo- Bruce Conner and Lee Bontecou, complement
Nevelson and Cornell's interior mind spaces.
rary artists.
The portrait is the subject of the second thematic
grouping in Gallery 4. On view are works by
artists ranging from Alberto Giacometti to Jasper
Johns to Lorna Simpson. The portrait is explored
not as a direct representation but as an expressive,
symbolic, and metaphOrical reading of human
psychology and its relationship to societal pulls.
The portrayal of character as mask, persona, or
shell underlies these diverse works, which include a Joseph Beuys felt-suit multiple, a largescale black-and-white photograph by young
African-American artist Lorna Simpson, Marsden
Hartley's haunting oil portrait Cleophas (19381939), Andy Warhol's 16 Jackies (1964), and a
Susan Rothenberg painting of a horse, Tattoo
(1979), which she has described as "a symbol of
people, a self-portrait."
Minimai Art, one of the strengths of the Walker
collection, is shown in Gallery 5. Paintings by
Barnett Newman and Ad Reinhardt, in which
narrative and symbol are purged in favor of the
In contrast to Nevelson's work, an adjacent room
of works by Richard Artschwager fuses surrealistic distortion and disorientation with a Pop-spirited humor. A number of recently acquired
Artschwager multiples - odd adapations of everyday objects and figures of speech - join his
large laminated-plastic relief of a door archway,
Low Overhead (1984), creating a playroom for
the imagination. Artschwager says of his use of
laminated plastic to imitate wood, "It looked as if
wood had passed through it, as if the thing only
half existed ... it was a picture of a piece of wood." .
In the large spaces of Gallery 6 are works by
contemporary artists that address issues of history,
myth, and allegory. A large, recently acquired
painting (see cover) by German artist Sigmar Polke,
Mrs . Autumn and Her Two Daughters (1991), is
on view for the first time. Another recent acquisition, a monumental black-and-white photograph of celebrants in a Polish disco by young
English artist Craigie Horsfield, brings a
The Walker Art Center calendar of events is printed on recycled paper.
Brueghel-like vision to the flux of the contemporaryworld. Sculpture by Jannis Kounellis and two
major paintings by Anselm Kiefer, The Order of
Angels (1985 -1987) and Emanation (1984 -1986),
also are seen in a new context.
The last thematic grouping in the new installation
combines conceptual and analytical modes of
making art, emphasizing the lingUistic, mathematical, and time-based systems through which
art is conceived. Chuck Close's fust large, photographiC painting, Big Self-Portrait (1968), is shown
with Mark Tansey's painting Constructing the
Grand Canyon (1990). Marcel Broodthaers'
plastic plaques are seen with a Jasper Johns painting' Flags-{ 1965 . One-of:cSiah. .AnJ\Qjam:.s areh·
tectural models for a bridge, a series of date
paintings by JatJanese-American artist On Kawara,
and a large gridded sculpture by Sol LeWitt
highlight these reflexive and de constructive
methods. Artists' books by LeWitt and Eleanor
Antin are also on view. These will be periodically
alternated with other artists' books, including
works by Ed Ruscha and Lawrence Weiner.
At the center of Gallery 6, and linking the last two
thematic groupings, is a room built for the presentation of a mm installation, entitled Box
(1977), by Irish artist James Coleman. Based on
footage from the Jack Dempsey-Gene Tunney
heavyweight championship boxing match of
1927, the work at once recalls history and addresses the viewer's own fight for self-awareness.
With both the mm projector and the mm itself
exposed, Box explores its own construction as
well as how the audience derives meaning from it.
Works explonng new themes will, from time to
time, replace existing groups, allowing the entire
installation to evolve gradually and present fresh,
provocative possibilities for interpretation.
This installation of the permanent collection is
dedicated to the memory of Edmond R. and
Evelyn H . Ruben, two longtime patrons of the
Walker Art Center.
Portraits, Plots, and Places: The Permanent
Collection Revisited has been made possible in
part with funds from the National Endowment
for the Arts.