Tacita Dean
Tacita Dean
Born	Canterbury
Nationality	English
Field	Conceptual art, installation art
Training	Falmouth School of Art
Movement	Young British Artists

Tacita Dean (born Canterbury, Kent, 1965) is an English visual artist who works primarily in film. She is one of the Young British Artists, and was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998.

Life and work[link]

Tacita Dean was born in Canterbury, in Kent. While she was growing up, her family lived next door to the legendary countertenor Alfred Deller and his family (including Mark Deller, who sang at her father's funeral).^[1] Her brother is architect Ptolemy Dean. Her grandfather was actor Basil Dean.

Dean was educated at Kent College, Canterbury. She studied at Falmouth School of Art, graduating in 1988. From 1990–2, Dean studied for a Masters degree at the Slade School of Fine Art. Dean held her first solo exhibition, The Martyrdom of St Agatha and Other Stories, at Galerija Skuc, Maribor, Slovenia.

In 1995, she was included in General Release: Young British Artists held at the XLVI Venice Biennale.^[2] She is one of the "key names",^[3] along with Jake and Dinos Chapman, Gary Hume, Sam Taylor-Wood, Fiona Banner and Douglas Gordon,^[3] of the Young British Artists (YBAs).^[3][4] Her work actually had little in common with the prominent YBAs, Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.^[5]

In 1997, Dean moved to London. That same year she began to exhibit splices of magnetic tape cut the length required to document the duration of the sound indicated, such as a raven's cry. In 2001 she was given a solo show at Tate Britain. In 2000 Dean was awarded a one-year German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to Berlin, where she moved that year. She devoted attention to the architecture and cultural history of Germany. She has made films of such iconic structure as the Berliner Fernsehturm and the Palast der Republik. Other projects have concerned important figures in post-war German cultural history, such as W.G. Sebald and Joseph Beuys.

2006 saw the most comprehensive retrospective of her work to date, ‘Analogue', held at Schaulager Basel.^[6]

In 2009, the Nicola Trussardi Foundation has presented Still Life, Tacita Dean’s first major solo exhibition in Italy, on the first floor (piano nobile) of Palazzo Dugnani, a historic building in the centre of Milan. The exhibition has presented a selection of fourteen works, including the world premiere of two films commissioned and produced by the Nicola Trussardi Foundation: Still Life and Day for Night, filmed in the Bolognese studio of painter Giorgio Morandi.

Dean has undertaken commissions for London's defunct Millennium Dome, the Sadler's Wells Theatre, and for Cork, Ireland, as part of that city's European City of Culture celebrations. She has also completed residencies at the Sundance Institute, the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, U.S., and the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, Berlin

She lives and works in Berlin.

1. ^ Discussed by Dean on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions program (26 February 2012).
2. ^ "Scuola San Pasquale General Release: Young British Artists", British Council. Retrieved 14 June 2010.
3. ^ ^{a b c} Grant, Simon. "Cultural propganda?"[sic], Apollo, 27 March 2009. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
4. ^ Daly, Emma. "The once and future Oporto", The New York Times, 11 March 2001. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
5. ^ Bush, Kate. "Young British art: Kate Bush on the YBA sensation", ArtForum, October 2004. Retrieved from findarticles.com, 14 June 2010.
6. ^ See the accompanying catalogue: Theodora Vischer and Isabel Friedli (eds.): Tacita Dean, Analogue, Drawings 1991–2006

Themes[link]

Tacita Dean is best known for her work in 16mm film, although she utilises a variety of media including drawing, photography and sound. Her films often employ long takes and steady camera angles to create a contemplative atmosphere. Her anamorphic films are shot by cinematographers John Adderley and Jamie Cairney. Her sound recordist is Steve Felton. She has also published several pieces of her own writing, which she refers to as 'asides,' which complement her visual work. Since the mid-1990s her films have not included commentary, but are instead accompanied by often understated optical sound tracks.

Especially during the 1990s, the sea was a persistent theme in Dean's work. Perhaps most famously, she explored the tragic maritime misadventures of Donald Crowhurst, an amateur English sailor whose ambition to enter a race to solo circumnavigate the globe ended in deception, existential crisis and, eventually, tragedy.^[1] Dean has made a number of films and blackboard drawings relating to the Crowhurst story, exploiting the metaphorical richness of such motifs as the ocean, lighthouses and shipwrecks.

Re-turning to her, attraction with the sea, Amadeus (swell consopio) was made for the Folkestone Triennial (three year art show) in 2008.^[2]

Recognition[link]

Following her 1996 film Disappearance at Sea, Dean was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1998. She has since been awarded the Aachen Art Prize (2002), Hugo Boss Prize (2006),^[3] and Kurt Schwitters Prize (2009), among others.

Solo shows[link]

These include:

• Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (1997);
• Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, with US tour (1998);
• Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2000),
• MACBA, Barcelona (2001);
• Tate St Ives (2005).
• Schaulager, Basel Tacita Dean. Analogue: Films, Photographs, Drawings 1991–2006 (2006)
• Guggenheim Museum[The Hugo Boss prize 2006 Tacita Dean 23 February – 6 June (2007)
• Still Life, Palazzo Dugnani, Nicola Trussardi Foundation, Milan (2009)

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

• Ptolemy Dean, brother^[4] to Tacita Dean.
• Book Works, publisher.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Barcelona 2001: Tacita Dean. Barcelona: Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona and Actar.
• Godfrey, M.: ‘Photography Found and Lost: On Tacita Dean’s Floh,’ October vol. 114, Fall 2005, 90–119.
• Royoux, J-C. et al.: Tacita Dean. London: Phaidon, 2006.
• Trodd, T.: ‘Film at the End of the Twentieth Century: Obsolescence and Medium in the Work of Tacita Dean,’ Object 6, 2003/4.
• Vischer, T. and Friedli, I.: Tacita Dean. Analogue: Drawings 1991–2006. Basel: Schaulager, 2006.
• De Cecco, E.: Tacita Dean. Milano: postmedia books, 2004.

External links[link]

• Tacita Dean exhibition at Tate St Ives, UK, 2005
• Tacita Dean in the Tate Collection — artist biography and works viewable online
• Tacita Dean: Recent films and other works — Past exhibition at Tate Britain
• Tacita Dean — Aerial View of Teignmouth Electron, Cayman Brac. 16 September 1998
• Waterlog exhibition featuring recent work Michael Hamburger 2007
• Frith Street Gallery, London
• Tacita Dean at Fondazione Nicola Trussardi
• Works by Tacita Dean in Cal Cego. Contemporary Art Collection
• Artinfo.com.au review of 2009 ACCA exhibition by Tony Lloyd

Bastiaan Johan Christiaan "Bas Jan" Ader (born April 19, 1942 Winschoten, The Netherlands - lost at sea in 1975 between Cape Cod, Massachusetts and Ireland) was a conceptual artist, performance artist, photographer and filmmaker. He lived in Los Angeles for the last 10 years of his life. Ader's work was in many instances presented as photographs and film of his performances. He also made performative installations, including Please Don't Leave Me (1969).

Youth[link]

Ader grew up in Winschoten, The Netherlands, cared for by his mother, as one of the 2 sons of Christian minister Bastiaan Jan Ader and Johanna Adriana Ader-Appels. His father had been executed in 1944 by the German occupying force, after his involvement in the 'underground' resistance movement.

Education[link]

During adolescence Ader took art classes at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and later in the United States during a study abroad program. Ader graduated from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1965 with a BFA, and from the Claremont Graduate School in 1967. After graduating, Ader taught at various institutions, including Mount San Antonio College, Immaculate Heart College, and the University of California, Irvine.

Famous works[link]

I'm too sad to tell you (1970)

Ader's most popular work is his 1970 silent short film piece, I'm too sad to tell you, that consists of the artist crying in front of a camera after a brief title.^[1] The interests and concerns in Ader's oeuvre locate him in similar art historical tropes of conceptual and performance artists of the 1970s, such as Chris Burden and Bruce Nauman. Like many conceptual art works of the 1970s, his works were recorded in descriptive notes and statements destined to have flexible and repeated incarnations.

Many myths have spread out about Ader's disappearance at sea, leading to speculations about supposedly lost works resurfacing.

Death[link]

Ader was lost at sea while attempting a single-handed west-east crossing of the Atlantic in a 13 ft pocket cruiser, a modified Guppy 13 named "Ocean Wave". The passage was part of an art performance titled "In Search of the Miraculous". Radio contact broke off three weeks into the voyage, and Ader was presumed lost at sea. The boat was found after 10 months, floating partially submerged 150 miles West-Southwest of the coast of Ireland. His body was never found. The boat, after being recovered by the Spanish fishing vessel that found it, was taken to Coruña. The boat was later stolen.^[2]

Revival[link]

Ader's revival began in the hands of artists, notable is Christopher Williams Bouquet for Bas Jan Ader and Christopher D'Arcangelo, 1991, with many later artists finding inspiration in the artist's romantic take on Conceptualism. With a limited body of work, primarily film and video, exhibitions of his work are difficult though two important retrospectives have occurred, one at the Sweeney Art Gallery in Riverside in 1999, curated by Brad Spence^[3] with catalogue contributions by Thomas Crow, Jan Tumlir, and Brad Spence, and another organized by Camden Arts Centre, London and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen Rotterdam, in cooperation with Kunsthalle Basel titled Bas Jan Ader – Please don’t leave me, accompanied by a catalogue published in English by Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, edited by Rein Wolfs, with texts by Erik Beenker and Jörg Heiser, amongst others.

The 2006 documentary film Here is Always Somewhere Else, followed up on Ader's recognition in the contemporary art world. As seen through the eyes of fellow Dutch emigrant filmmaker Rene Daalder, the film attempts to chronicle the life and work of Bas Jan Ader. Here is Always Somewhere Else, was released on DVD in November 2008 and features a collection of Bas Jan's film and video works.^[4]

Additionally, Erika Yeomans' conceptual documentary In Search of Bas Jan's Miraculous (1998, 40 mins., mixed media) on the life and art of Bas Jan continues to screen in various festivals and galleries, most recently as part of Dutch Kultprom Russian Tour of Bas Jan's videos. The project was also featured on This American Life in 1996.^[5] In 2009, 2nd Cannons Publications from Los Angeles released "Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film," a flip-book of a supposed lost Ader film. ^[6]

References[link]

Specific references

Other sources

• Jan Verwoert, Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, London: Afterall Books, 2006. ISBN 1-84638-002-2.

External links[link]

• Official Bas Jan Ader website
• Here is Always Somewhere Else official website
• I'm too sad to tell you on YouTube
• Distinguished Alumni page from the Otis College of Art and Design
• The Artist Who Sailed to Oblivion from the Telegraph online.

Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham (April 16, 1919 – July 26, 2009) was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance. He is also notable for his frequent collaborations with artists of other disciplines, including musicians John Cage and David Tudor, artists Robert Rauschenberg and Bruce Nauman, designer Romeo Gigli, and architect Benedetta Tagliabue. Works that he produced with these artists had a profound impact on avant-garde art beyond the world of dance.

As a choreographer, teacher and leader of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company,^[2] Cunningham had a profound influence on modern dance. Many dancers who trained with Cunningham formed their own companies, and they include Paul Taylor, Remy Charlip, Viola Farber, Charles Moulton, Karole Armitage, Robert Kovich, Foofwa d’Imobilité, Kimberly Bartosik, Floanne Ankah and Jonah Bokaer.

In 2009, the Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Plan, a precedent-setting plan for the continuation of Cunningham’s work and the celebration and preservation of his artistic legacy.^[3]

Cunningham earned some of the highest honors bestowed in the arts, including the National Medal of Arts and the MacArthur Fellowship. He also received Japan's Praemium Imperiale, a British Laurence Olivier Award, and was named Officier of the Légion d'honneur in France.

Cunningham’s life and artistic vision have been the subject of numerous books, films, and exhibitions, and his works have been presented by groups including the Paris Opéra Ballet, New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, White Oak Dance Project, and London's Rambert Dance Company.

Biography[link]

Merce Cunningham was born in Centralia, Washington in 1919, the second of three sons. Both his brothers followed their father into the legal profession. Cunningham initially received his first formal dance and theater training at the Cornish School (now Cornish College of the Arts) in Seattle, which he attended from 1937–9 at age 20. During this time, Martha Graham saw Cunningham dance and invited him to join her company.^[4]

In the fall of 1939, Cunningham moved to New York and began a six-year stint as a soloist in the company of Martha Graham. He presented his first solo concert in New York in April 1944 with composer John Cage, who became his life partner and frequent collaborator until Cage's death in 1992.

In the summer of 1953, as a teacher in residence at Black Mountain College, Cunningham formed the Merce Cunningham Dance Company as a forum to explore his new ideas on dance and the performing arts.

Over the course of his career, Cunningham choreographed more than 200 dances and over 800 “Events,” which are site-specific choreographic works. In 1963 he joined with Cage to create the Walker Art Center's first performance, instigating what would be a 25-year collaborative relationship with the Walker. In his performances, he often used the I Ching in order to determine the sequence of his dances and, often, dancers were not told until the night of the performance. In addition to his role as choreographer, Cunningham performed as a dancer in his company into the early 1990s.

He continued to lead his dance company until his death, and presented a new work, Nearly Ninety, in April 2009, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, to mark his 90th birthday.^[5]

Cunningham lived in New York City, and was Artistic Director of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. He died peacefully in his home.^[6]

Merce Cunningham Dance Company[link]

Cunningham formed Merce Cunningham Dance Company (MCDC) at Black Mountain College in 1953. Guided by its leader's radical approach to space, time and technology, the Company has forged a distinctive style, reflecting Cunningham’s technique and illuminating the near limitless possibility for human movement.

The original Company included dancers Carolyn Brown, Viola Farber, Paul Taylor, and Remy Charlip, and musicians John Cage and David Tudor.

In its early years, MCDC toured in a Volkswagen bus driven by John Cage with just enough room for six dancers, the two musicians, and a stage manager, who was often Robert Rauschenberg. MCDC’s first international tour in 1964—which included performances in Western and Eastern Europe, India, Thailand, and Japan—solidified a constant stream of national and international bookings. In the years since, MCDC has continued to tour the world to critical and popular acclaim, serving as an ambassador for contemporary American culture.

Recent performances and projects include a two-year residency at Dia:Beacon, where MCDC performed Events, Cunningham’s site-specific choreographic collages, in the galleries of Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt among others. In 2007, MCDC premiered XOVER, Cunningham’s final collaboration with Rauschenberg, at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In 2009, MCDC premiered Cunningham’s newest work, Nearly Ninety, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Company is presently concluding its farewell tour. ^[7]

Final Performance:

Park Avenue Armory Events (2011)
Arranged by: Robert Swinston
Music: David Behrman, John King, Takehisa Kosugi and Christian Wolf
Décor: Daniel Arsham
Costumes: Anna Finke
Lighting: Christine Shallenberg

Artistic philosophy[link]

Collaboration[link]

Still frame from Loops, a digital art collaboration with Cunningham and The OpenEnded Group that interprets Cunningham's motion-captured dance for the hands.

Since its founding, Merce Cunningham Dance Company has frequently collaborated with visual artists, architects, designers, and musicians.

From the company's beginnings, Cunningham collaborated with John Cage, its Musical Advisor and Cunningham's life partner from the 1940s until Cage’s death in 1992. Cage had the greatest influence on his practice. Together, Cunningham and Cage proposed a number of radical innovations. The most famous and controversial of these concerned the relationship between dance and music, which they concluded may occur in the same time and space, but should be created independently of one another. They also made extensive use of chance procedures, abandoning not only musical forms, but narrative and other conventional elements of dance composition—such as cause and effect, and climax and anticlimax. For Cunningham the subject of his dances was always dance itself.

After his death, John Cage was succeeded in the role of music director by David Tudor. Since 1995, MCDC has been under the music direction of Takehisa Kosugi. MCDC has commissioned more work from contemporary composers than any other dance company. Its repertory includes works by musicians ranging from John Cage and Gordon Mumma to Gavin Bryars and even contemporary bands like Radiohead, Sigur Rós and Sonic Youth^[8].

The Company has also collaborated with an array of visual artists and designers. Robert Rauschenberg, whose famous “Combines” reflect the approach he used to create décor for a number of MCDC’s early works, served as the Company’s resident designer from 1954 through 1964. Jasper Johns followed as Artistic Advisor from 1967 until 1980, and Mark Lancaster from 1980 through 1984. The last Advisors to be appointed were William Anastasi and Dove Bradshaw in 1984. Other artists who have collaborated with MCDC include Daniel Arsham, Tacita Dean, Liz Phillips, Rei Kawakubo, Roy Lichtenstein, Bruce Nauman, Ernesto Neto, Frank Stella, Benedetta Tagliabue, and Andy Warhol.

Chance operations[link]

John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the "I Ching," the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams.

Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64—the number of the hexagrams —to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should follow—say a particular sound—what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance.

I was working on a title called, “Untitled Solo,” and I had made—using the chance operations—a series of movements written on scraps of paper for the legs and the arms, the head, all different. And it was done not to the music but with the music of Christian Wolff. —Merce Cunningham, Merce Cunningham: A Lifetime of Dance, 2000

Although the use of chance operations was considered an abrogation of artistic responsibility,^{[citation needed]} Cunningham was thrilled by a process that arrives at works that could never have been created through traditional collaboration. This does not mean, however, that Cunningham holds every piece created in this fashion is a masterpiece. Those dances that do not "work" are quickly dropped from repertory, while those that do are celebrated as serendipitous discoveries.

Another of Cunningham's innovations was the development of what might be called "non-representative" dance which simply emphasizes movement: in Cunningham's choreography, dancers do not necessarily represent any historical figure, emotional situation, or idea.

Use of technology[link]

Cunningham’s lifelong passion for exploration and innovation has made him a leader in applying new technologies to the arts. He began investigating dance on film in the 1970s, and since 1991 has choreographed using the computer program DanceForms. Cunningham explored motion capture technology with digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar to create Hand-drawn Spaces, a three-screen animation that was commissioned by and premiered at SIGGRAPH in 1998. This led to a live dance for the stage, BIPED, for which Kaiser and Eshkar provided the projected decor. In 2008, Cunningham released his Loops choreography for the hands as motion-capture data under a Creative Commons license; this was the basis for the open source collaboration of the same name with The OpenEnded Group.

In 2009, Cunningham’s interest in new media led to the creation of Mondays with Merce. This webcast series provides a never-before-seen look at the Company and Cunningham’s teaching technique with video of advanced technique class, Company rehearsal, archival footage, and interviews with current and former Company members, choreographers, and collaborators.

Legacy Plan[link]

The Cunningham Dance Foundation announced the Legacy Plan (LLP) in June 2009. The Plan provided a roadmap for the future of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, as envisioned by Cunningham. The first of its kind in the dance world, the plan represents Merce Cunningham’s vision for continuing his work in the upcoming years, transitioning his Company once he was no longer able to lead it, and preserving his oeuvre.

The Legacy Plan includes a comprehensive documentation and preservation program, which will ensure that pieces from his repertory can be studied, performed and enjoyed by future generations with knowledge of how they originally came to life. In addition, to ensure the authenticity of the presentation of his oeuvre once Cunningham was no longer able to lead his Company, the plan outlined a final international tour for the Company, and, ultimately, the closure of the Cunningham Dance Foundation and Merce Cunningham Dance Company and the transfer of all assets to the Merce Cunningham Trust, established by Cunningham to serve as the custodian for his works. From Merce's death at age 90 through the Board's last meeting in 2012, the Legacy Plan implemented his wish that the Company complete a worldwide legacy tour and then close. December 31, 2011 was the final performance of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.

The final meeting of the Board of Directors for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company was held March 15, 2012, in Merce's beautiful studio at the top of the Westbeth building in the West Village.^[9]

Exhibitions[link]

There have been numerous exhibitions dedicated to Cunningham’s work. In addition, he is a visual artist represented by Margarete Roeder Gallery.

The major exhibition Invention: Merce Cunningham & Collaborators at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts closed on October 13, 2007.

Merce Cunningham: Dancing on the Cutting Edge, an exhibition of recent design for MCDC, opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, in January 2007.

A trio of exhibitions devoted to John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, and Merce Cunningham, curated by Ron Bishop, were shown in the spring of 2002 at the Gallery of Fine Art, Edison College, Fort Myers, Florida.

A major exhibition about Cunningham and his collaborations, curated by Germano Celant, was first seen at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona in 1999, and subsequently at the Fundação de Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 1999; the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna, 2000; and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2000.

Works[link]

Cunningham choreographed almost two hundred works for his company.^[10]

Suite for Five (1956–1958)
Music: John Cage, Music for Piano
Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg
Lighting: Beverly Emmons

Crises (1960)
Music: Conlon Nancarrow (from Rhythm Studies for Player Piano)
Costumes, Lighting: Robert Rauschenberg

Rainforest (1968)
Music: David Tudor
Décor: Andy Warhol (Silver Clouds)
Costumes: Jasper Johns (uncredited)
Lighting: Richard Nelson

Second Hand (1970)
Music: John Cage, (Cheap Imitation)
Décor & Costumes: Jasper Johns
Lighting: Richard Nelson (1970) Christine Shallenberg (2008)

Sounddance (1975)
Music: David Tudor, Toneburst & Untitled (1975/1994)
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Mark Lancaster

Fabrications (1987)
Music: Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, Short Waves & SBbr
Décor, Costumes: Dove Bradshaw
Lighting: Josh Johnson

CRWDSPCR (1993)
Music: John King, blues 99
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Mark Lancaster

Ocean (1994)
Music: David Tudor,Soundings: Ocean Diary and Andrew Culver, Ocean 1–95
Décor, Lighting, Costumes: Marsha Skinner

BIPED (1999)
Music: Gavin Bryars, Biped
Décor: Paul Kaiser, Shelley Eshkar
Costumes: Suzanne Gallo
Lighting: Aaron Copp

Split Sides (2003)
Music: Radiohead, Sigur Rós
Décor: Robert Heishman, Catherine Yass
Costumes: James Hall
Lighting: James F. Ingalls

Views on Stage (2004)
Music: John Cage, ASLSP and Music for Two
Décor: Ernesto Neto, Other Animal
Costumes: James Hall
Lighting: Josh Johnson

eyeSpace (2006)
Music: Mikel Rouse, International Cloud Atlas
Décor: Henry Samelson, Blues Arrive Not Anticipating What Transpires Even Between Themselves
Costumes: Henry Samelson
Lighting: Josh Johnson

eyeSpace (2007)
Music: David Behrman, Long Throw and/or Annea Lockwood, Jitterbug
Décor: Daniel Arsham, ODE/EON
Costumes: Daniel Arsham
Lighting: Josh Johnson

XOVER (2007)
Music: John Cage, Aria (1958) and Fontana Mix (1958)
Décor & Costumes: Robert Rauschenberg, Plank
Lighting: Josh Johnson

Nearly Ninety (2009)
Music: John Paul Jones, Takehisa Kosugi, Sonic Youth
Décor: Benedetta Tagliabue
Costumes: Romeo Gigli for io ipse idem
Lighting: Brian MacDevitt
Video Design: Franc Aleu

Honors & awards[link]

2009
Jacob’s Pillow Dance Award
Skowhegan Medal for Performance

2008
Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY

2007
Nelson A. Rockefeller Award, Purchase College School of the Arts, State University of New York
Montgomery Fellow (Arts and Literature), Dartmouth College, Hanover NH

2006
Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA

2005
Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis MN
Praemium Imperiale, Tokyo

2004
Officier of the Légion d'Honneur, France

2003
Edward MacDowell Medal in interdisciplinary art, the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough NH

2002
Kitty Carlisle Hart Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Arts (Arts & Business Council), New York NY
MATA (Music at the Anthology) Award, New York NY
Medal of the City of Dijon, France

2001
Coat of Arms of the City of Mulhouse, France
La Grande Médaille de la Ville de Paris (echelon vermeil) from the Mayor of Paris
Career Transition for Dancers Award, New York NY
Herald Archangel Award, Glasgow, Scotland
Honorary degree from Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia

2000
Nijinsky Special Prize, Monaco
The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, New York NY
Named a “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, Washington DC

1999
Premio Internazionale “Gino Tani,” Rome
Handel Medallion from the Mayor of New York City NY
Isadora Duncan Dance Award for Lifetime Achievement, San Francisco CA
Fellow of the Academy of Performing Arts, Hong Kong
The key to the City of Montpellier, France

1998
Bagley Wright Fund Established Artists Award, Seattle WA

1997
Barnard College Medal of Distinction, New York NY
Grand Prix of the Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, France

1996
Nellie Cornish Arts Achievement Award from his alma mater, Cornish College of the Arts, Seattle WA

1995
Honorary degree from Wesleyan University, Middletown CT
Carina Ari Award (Grand Prix Video Danse with Elliot Caplan), Stockholm, Sweden
Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, Italy

1993
Inducted into the National Museum of Dance C.V. Whitney Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, NY
Dance and Performance Award for Best Performance by a Visiting Artist, London, England
Medal of Honor from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid, Spain
(With John Cage, posthumously) the Wexner Prize of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University, Columbus OH
New York Dance and Performance Award (“Bessie”), New York NY
Tiffany Award from the International Society of Performing Arts Administrators, New York NY

1990
National Medal of Arts, Washington DC
Porselli Prize, Italy
Digital Dance Premier Award, London, England
Award of Merit from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, New York NY

1989
Chevalier of the Légion d'Honneur, France

1988
Dance/USA National Honor, New York NY

1987
Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas TX

1985
Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Dance Production (Pictures), London, England
Kennedy Center Honors, Washington DC
MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chicago IL

1984
Inducted as an Honorary Member into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, New York NY

1983
The Mayor of New York’s Award of Honor for Arts and Culture, New York NY

1982
The Samuel H. Scripps/American Dance Festival Award, Durham NC
Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France

1977
Capezio Award, New York NY

1975
New York State Award, Albany NY

1972
BITEF Award, Belgrade, Yugoslavia
Honorary degree from the University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana IL

1966
Gold Medal for Choreographic Invention at the Fourth International Festival of Dance, Paris

1964
Medal of the Society for the Advancement of Dancing in Sweden, Stockholm

1960
Dance Magazine Award, New York NY

1959 & 1954
Fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York NY

Footnotes[link]

Sources[link]

• Bremser, M. (Ed) (1999) Fifty Contemporary Choreographers. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-10364-9
• Cunningham, Merce (1968) Changes/Notes on Choreography. Something Else Press.
• Cunningham, M. and Lesschaeve, J. (1992) The Dancer and the Dance. Marion Boyars Publishers. ISBN 0-7145-2931-1
• Vaughan, David (1999) Merce Cunningham: Fifty Years. Aperture. ISBN 0-89381-863-1
• Vaughan, D. and Cunningham, M. (2002) Other Animals. Aperture. ISBN 978-0-89381-946-0
• Kostelanetz, R. (1998) Merce Cunningham: Dancing in Space and Time. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80877-3
• Brown, Carolyn (2007) Chance and Circumstance Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-40191-1 Biography 53750

External links[link]

• Merce Cunningham Dance Company
• Archival footage of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing in Sounddance in 2009 at Jacob's Pillow.
• DLAR Artists bio
• PBS:American Masters biography
• Kennedy Center biography
• Archive footage of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company performing Cunningham's piece Banjo in 1955 at Jacob's Pillow
• American Ballet Theater biography
• Merce Cunningham ìn the Mediateca Media Art Space
• Merce Cunningham at the Internet Movie Database
• Merce Cunningham — Daily Telegraph obituary
• Guardian Obituary
• Online memorial
• Obituary in the Star-Gazette
• New York Times Obituary 28 July 2009

Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly, Jr. ( /saɪ ˈtwɒmbli/) (April 25, 1928 – July 5, 2011^[1][2]) was an American artist well known for his large-scale, freely scribbled, calligraphic-style graffiti paintings, on solid fields of mostly gray, tan, or off-white colors. He exhibited his paintings worldwide.

Twombly used the nickname "Cy", after his father (also nicknamed Cy, who was briefly a pitcher in Major League Baseball) and the star baseball pitcher Cy Young.^[3] Twombly's paintings blur the line between drawing and painting. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard on which someone has practiced cursive "e"s. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge – each mark with its own history – as its proper subject.

Later, many of his paintings and works on paper moved into "romantic symbolism", and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. Examples of this are his Apollo and The Artist and a series of eight drawings consisting solely of inscriptions of the word "VIRGIL". In a 1994 retrospective, curator Kirk Varnedoe described Twombly's work as “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”^[4] After acquiring Twombly's Three Studies from the Temeraire (1998–99), the Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales said "sometimes people need a little bit of help in recognising a great work of art that might be a bit unfamiliar".^[5] He is said to have influenced younger artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Francesco Clemente, and Julian Schnabel.^[6]

Early life and career[link]

Twombly was born in Lexington, Virginia, on April 25, 1928. Twombly's father, also nicknamed "Cy", pitched for the Chicago White Sox.^[7] They were both nicknamed after the baseball great Cy Young who pitched for among others the Cardinals, Red Sox, Indians, and Braves.

At age 12, he began to take private art lessons with the Spanish modern master Pierre Daura.^[8] He served as a cryptographer in the U.S. army. After graduating from Lexington High School in 1946, Twombly attended Darlington School in Rome, Georgia, and studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (1948–49), and at Washington and Lee University (1949–50) in Lexington, Virginia. On a tuition scholarship from 1950 to 1951, he studied at the Art Students League of New York, where he met Robert Rauschenberg, who encouraged him to attend Black Mountain College near Asheville, North Carolina. At Black Mountain in 1951 and 1952 he studied with Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and Ben Shahn, and met John Cage.

Arranged by Motherwell, the Samuel Kootz Gallery in New York organized Twombly's first solo exhibition in 1951. At this time his work was influenced by Kline's black-and-white gestural expressionism, as well as Paul Klee's imagery. In 1952, Twombly received a grant from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which enabled him to travel to North Africa, Spain, Italy, and France. Between 1954 and 1956, he taught at the Southern Seminary and Junior College in Buena Vista, Virginia.

In 1957, Twombly moved to Rome, where he met the Italian artist Baroness Tatiana Franchetti – sister of his patron Baron Giorgio Franchetti. They were married at City Hall in New York in 1959^[9] and then bought a palazzo on the Via di Monserrato in Rome. Later on, they preferred to dwell in Gaeta near Rome. In 2011, Twombly died in Rome after being hospitalized for several days; he had had cancer for many years.^[10] He has a son, Cyrus Alessandro Twombly, who is also a painter and lives in Rome.

Work[link]

After his return in 1953, Twombly served in the U.S. army as a cryptologist, an activity that left a distinct mark on his artistic style. From 1955 to 1959, he worked in New York, where he became a prominent figure among a group of artists including Robert Rauschenberg – with whom he had a relationship^[11] and was sharing a studio^[12] – and Jasper Johns. Exposure to the emerging New York School purged figurative aspects from his work, encouraging a simplified form of abstraction. He became fascinated with tribal art, using the painterly language of the early 1950s to invoke primitivism, reversing the normal evolution of the New York School. Twombly soon developed a technique of gestural drawing that was characterized by thin white lines on a dark canvas that appear to be scratched onto the surface. His early sculptures, assembled from discarded objects, similarly cast their gaze back to Europe and North Africa. He stopped making sculptures in 1959 and did not take up sculpturing again until 1976.^[13]

Just when Johns and Rauschenberg were starting to sell to museums as well as private collectors, Twombly, who was not yet 30, moved to Gaeta in Southern Italy in 1957. This furthered his use of classical sources: from 1962 he produced a cycle of works based on subjects from history such as Leda and the Swan. The subject of Leda and the Swan, like that of The Birth of Venus was one of the most dramatic and frequent themes of Twombly's work of the early 1960s. Between 1960 and 1963 Twombly painted the subject of Leda's rape by the god Zeus/Jupiter in the form of a Swan six times, once in 1960, twice in 1962 and three times in 1963.^[14] Twombly was interested in different mythological figures and began to inscribe their names during the 1960s.^[15]

The critical low point probably came after a widely panned 1964 exhibition of the nine-panel Discourses on Commodus (1963) at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. The artist and writer Donald Judd was especially damning, calling the show a fiasco. “There are a few drips and splatters and an occasional pencil line,” he wrote in a review. “There isn’t anything to these paintings.”^[16]

Erotic and corporeal symbols became more prominent, whilst a greater lyricism developed in his 'Blackboard paintings'. Between 1967 and 1971, he produced a number of works on gray grounds, the 'grey paintings'. This series features terse, colorless scrawls, reminiscent of chalk on a blackboard, that form no actual words. Twombly made this work using an unusual technique: he sat on the shoulders of a friend, who shuttled back and forth along the length of the canvas, thus allowing the artist to create his fluid, continuous lines.^[17] In the summer and early autumn of 1969, Twombly made a series of fourteen paintings while staying at Bolsena, a lake to the north of Rome. In 1971, Nini Pirandello, the wife of Twombly’s Roman gallerist Plinio De Martiis, died suddenly. In tribute, Twombly painted the elegiac "Nini’s Paintings".

His later sculptures exhibit a similar blend of emotional expansiveness and intellectual sophistication. From 1976, Twombly again produced sculptures, lightly painted in white, suggestive of Classical forms. Like his earlier works, these pieces are assembled from found materials such as pieces of wood or packaging, or cast in bronze and covered in white paint and plaster.^[18] In an interview with critic David Sylvester, on the occasion of the large exhibition of his sculpture at Kunstmuseum Basel in 2000, Twombly revealed that, for him, the demands of making sculpture were distinctly different from those required of painting. “[Sculpture is] a whole other state. And it’s a building thing. Whereas the painting is more fusing—fusing of ideas, fusing of feelings, fusing projected on atmosphere.”^[19]

In the mid-1970s, in paintings such as Untitled (1976), Twombly began to evoke landscape through colour (favouring brown, green and light blue), written inscriptions and collage elements.^[20] In 1978 he worked on the monumental historical ensemble Fifty Days at Iliam, a ten-part cycle inspired by Homer's Iliad; since then Twombly continued to draw on literature and myth, deploying cryptic pictorial metaphors that situate individual experience within the grand narratives of Western tradition, as in the Gaeta canvases and the monumental Four Seasons concluded in 1994.

In an essay in the catalogue to the 2011 Dulwich exhibition (see below), Katharina Schmidt summarizes the scope and technique of Twombly's œuvre:

"Cy Twombly's work can be understood as one vast engagement with cultural memory. His paintings, drawings and sculptures on mythological subjects have come to form a significant part of that memory. Usually drawing on the most familiar gods and heroes, he restricts himself to just a few, relatively well-known episodes, as narrated by poet-historians, given visible shape by artists and repeatedly reinterpreted in the literature and visual art of later centuries.....His special medium is writing. Starting out from purely graphic marks, he developed a kind of meta-script in which abbreviated signs, hatchings, loops, numbers and the simplest of pictographs spread throughout the picture plane in a process of incessant movement, repeatedly subverted by erasures. Eventually, this metamorphosed into script itself."^[21]

However, in a 1994 article Kirk Varnedoe thought it necessary to defend Twombly's seemingly random marks and splashes of paint against the criticism that "This is just scribbles – my kid could do it".

"One could say that any child could make a drawing like Twombly only in the sense that any fool with a hammer could fragment sculptures as Rodin did, or any house painter could spatter paint as well as Pollock. In none of these cases would it be true. In each case the art lies not so much in the finesse of the individual mark, but in the orchestration of a previously uncodified set of personal "rules" about where to act and where not, how far to go and when to stop, in such a way as the cumulative courtship of seeming chaos defines an original, hybrid kind of order, which in turn illuminates a complex sense of human experience not voiced or left marginal in previous art."^[22]

Together with Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Twombly is regarded as the most important representative of a generation of artists who distanced themselves from Abstract Expressionism.^[23]

Exhibitions[link]

After having shown at Stable Gallery from 1953 to 1957, Twombly moved to Leo Castelli Gallery and later exhibited with Gagosian Gallery. Gagosian Gallery opened a new gallery in Rome, Twombly's home town on the December 15, 2007 with their inaugural exhibition being his "Three Notes from Salalah".^[24]

In 1993, at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, an exhibition of Twombly's photographs offered a selection of large blurry color images of tulips, trees and ancient busts, based on the artist's Polaroids. In 2008, a specially curated selection of Twombly's photographic work was exhibited in "Huis Marseille", the Museum for Photography, Amsterdam; the exhibition was opened by Sally Mann. In 2011, the Museum Brandhorst, mounted a retrospective of Twombly's photographs from 1951 to 2010. It later was passed over to the "Museum für Gegenwartskunst" at Siegen^[25] and the Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels.

Twombly's work went on display as part of "Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters" at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London from June 29, 2011 less than a week before Twombly's death. The show was built on a quote by Twombly stating that “I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time” and is the first time that his work was put in an exhibition with Poussin.^[26] Opening in conjunction with the museum's Modern Wing, Twombly's most recent solo exhibition —Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007— was on display at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009.

Retrospectives[link]

In 1968, the Milwaukee Art Museum mounted the first retrospective of his art. Twombly had his next retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1979, curated by David Whitney. The artist has later been honored by retrospectives at the Kunsthaus Zürich in 1987 (curated by Harald Szeemann), the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris, in 1988, and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1994, with additional venues in Houston, Los Angeles, and Berlin.^[27] In 2001, the Menil Collection, the Kunstmuseum Basel, and the National Gallery of Art presented the first exhibition devoted entirely to Twombly's sculpture, assembling sixty-six works created from 1946 to 1998.^[28] The European retrospective "Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons" opened at the Tate Modern, London, in June 2008, with subsequent versions at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna in Rome in 2009.

London held a Twombly retrospective at the Tate Modern from June 19 to September 14, 2008. Text for the showing read:

"This was his first solo retrospective in fifteen years, and provides an overview of his work from the 1950s to now.... At the heart of the exhibition is Twombly’s work exploring the cycles associated with seasons, nature and the passing of time. Several key groups are brought together for the first time, such as Tate’s Four Seasons (1993–94) with those from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The exhibition also explores how Twombly is influenced by antiquity, myth and the Mediterranean, for example the violent red swirls in the Bacchus 2005 paintings which bring to mind the drunken god of wine. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity to see the full range of Twombly’s long and influential career from a fresh perspective.^[18]"

Collections[link]

In 1989, the Philadelphia Museum of Art opened permanent rooms dedicated to his monumental 10-painting cycle, Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), based on Alexander Pope’s translation of “The Iliad.”^[16]

The Cy Twombly Gallery of the Menil Collection in Houston, which was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1995, houses more than thirty of Twombly's paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, dating from 1953 to 1994. A large collection of Twombly's work is also kept by the Museum Brandhorst, the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and The Dallas Museum of Art, Texas.

In 1995, The Four Seasons entered the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art as a gift from the artist. A recent (1998–1999) Twombly work, Three Studies from the Temeraire, a triptych, was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales for A$4.5 million in 2004. In 2010, Twombly’s permanent site-specific painting, Ceiling was unveiled in the Salle des Bronzes at the Musée du Louvre; he is only the third artist to have been invited to do so as well as only the first artist given this honor since Georges Braque in the 1950s.^[29] In 2011, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, made a large acquisition of nine works worth about $75 million.^[13]

Recognition[link]

Twombly was a recipient of numerous awards, in 1984 he was awarded the “Internationaler Preis für bildende Kunst des Landes Baden-Württemberg” and in 1987 the “Rubens-Peis der Stadt Siegen,” but most notably awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 1996.

Twombly was invited to exhibit his work at the Venice Biennale in 1964, 1989 and 2001 when he was awarded the Golden Lion at the 49th Venice Biennale. In 2010, he was made Chevalier of the Légion d’Honneur by the French government. During fall 2010, Tacita Dean produced a film on Twombly, titled "Edwin Parker".^[30]

Cy Twombly Foundation[link]

Twombly's will, written under U.S. law, allocated the bulk of the artist's art and cash to the Cy Twombly Foundation of New York. The foundation now controls much of Twombly's work. Under the foundation, a 25-foot-wide Beaux Arts mansion on East 82nd Street is due to open on a limited basis beginning in late 2012 as an exhibition and study center.^[31]

Art market[link]

In 1990, a Christie's auction set a record for Twombly, with his 1971 untitled blackboard painting fetching $5.5 million. In 2011, a Twombly work from 1967, "Untitled", sold for $15.2 million at Christie's in New York.^[32] A new record was made in May 2012 for the 1970 painting "Untitled (New York)" at Sotheby's, selling for $ 17.4 million (€ 13.4 million).^[33]

Publications[link]

A first monograph of drawings edited by Heiner Bastian was published in 1972. In 1977, the first monograph on the paintings was published by Propyläen Verlag in Berlin, followed by the publication of his catalogue raisonne of sculpture by Nicola Del Roscio in 1997.

[edit] Phaedrus Incident

In 2007, an exhibition of Twombly's paintings, Blooming, a Scattering of Blossoms and Other Things, and other works on paper from gallerist Yvon Lambert's collection was displayed from June to September in Avignon (France), at the Lambert Foundation (Hôtel de Caumont). On July 19, 2007, police arrested Cambodian-French artist Rindy Sam after she kissed one panel of Twombly's triptych Phaedrus. The panel, an all-white canvas, was smudged by Sam's red lipstick. She was tried in a court in Avignon for "voluntary degradation of a work of art".

Sam defended her gesture to the court: "J'ai fait juste un bisou. C'est un geste d'amour, quand je l'ai embrassé, je n'ai pas réfléchi, je pensais que l'artiste, il aurait compris... Ce geste était un acte artistique provoqué par le pouvoir de l'art" ("It was just a kiss, a loving gesture. I kissed it without thinking; I thought the artist would understand.... It was an artistic act provoked by the power of Art").

The prosecution, calling it "A sort of cannibalism, or parasitism", while admitting that Sam is "visibly not conscious of what she has done", asked that she be fined €4500 and compelled to attend a citizenship class. The art work, which is worth an estimated $2 million, was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Avignon.^[34][35][36] In November 2007 Sam was convicted and ordered to pay €1,000 to the painting's owner, €500 to the Avignon gallery that showed it, and €1 to the painter.^[37]

Sources[link]

• Chicago Art Institute Retrieved May 18, 2011
• Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons. Edited by Nicholas Serota. London: Tate Publishing and Distributed Art Publishers, 2008.
• Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters – Dulwich Picture Gallery June 29 – September 25, 2011.

References[link]