Papers by Jorge Daniel Torres de Veneciano
Foreword and Acknowledgments -- Jorge Daniel Veneciano Celebrating the Studio Glass Movement -- S... more Foreword and Acknowledgments -- Jorge Daniel Veneciano Celebrating the Studio Glass Movement -- Sharon Kennedy The Language of Glass: Material, Method, Meaning -- Therman Statom Selections from the Esterling-Wake Collection -- Sharon Kennedy A Conversation with Steve Wake -- Gregory Nosan Checklist of the Exhibition Compiled by Ashley Hussman Selected Bibliography and Notes Contributors Copyright Upon visiting the glass collection housed in the Esterling-Wake home, I began to imagine these remarkable works on display in Sheldon’s Great Hall. I pictured them in translucent splendor, imbibing the natural light that sweeps through the space daily. Few works in our collection can withstand the light from the cathedral-high windows at each end of the museum’s nave. These exceptional objects, however, hold their own against the daylight and harness its energy in the service of their own visual beauty
Uptown Conversation, 2004
Afterimage, Sep 1, 1995
Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, o... more Now when I was a little chap I had a passion for maps. I would look for hours at South America, or Africa, or Australia, and lose myself in the glories of exploration. At that time there were many blank spaces on the earth, and when I saw one that looked particularly inviting on a map (but they all look that) I would put my finger on it and say, "When I grow up I will go there." . . . But there was one yet - the biggest, the most blank, so to speak - that I had a hankering after. - Charlie Marlow in Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (1910)(1) I propose that we view the whole of American life as a drama acted out upon the body of a Negro giant who, lying trussed up like Gulliver, forms the stage and scene upon which and within which the action unfolds. If we examine the beginning of the Colonies, the application of this view is not, in its economic connotation at least, too far-fetched or too difficult to see. For then the Negro's body was exploited as amorally as the soil and climate. - Ralph Ellison, Shadow and Act (1964)(2) Part and parcel of the enduring colonial imagination has been to fathom no territorial limits in its hankering after the unknown and the unconquered, imperially and intellectually. "Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art," organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, ranged across the seductively topical terrain of a neo-colonial fascination and mapping: that of so-called black masculinity. In the exhibition catalog, curator Thelma Golden cites some thoughts by British cultural critic Kobena Mercer that articulate a conceptual premise for the show. Mercer states, extending a metaphor that recalls writer Ralph Ellison's own (above), that "black masculinity is not merely a social identity in crisis. It is also a key site of ideological representation, a site upon which the nation's crisis comes to be dramatized, demonized, and dealt with." The next sentence offers Golden's approbation, "This statement puts us at the heart of 'Black Male's' terrain."(3) She goes on to state, "I wanted to produce a project that would examine the black male as body and political icon" [emphases mine]. In Ellison's metaphor, the personification of a national drama still frames, some 30 years later, the social context within which to speak not only about the objectification of the black male body but also the sensationalized phenomenon that became the "Black Male" exhibition. The exhibition garnered fervent responses, many denunciatory. A core issue stirring this bluster of controversy surrounding the show involved the question of what it means to organize an exhibition on such thematic specificity: on a "racial," gendered subject-type. Given the context of our social climate, including recent media spectacles of black sexuality and excoriation (a "high-tech lynching," in the words of one self-proclaimed victim), the platforms of judiciary proceedings that have served as another theater of public debate; the mounting attacks on affirmative action and other legislation affecting black families, concurrent with the corporate capitalization of black sports icons, and so on - Can a procession of national spectacles be redressed by a sensationalized exhibition that was ipso facto another spectacle? And without "trussed up" implied in the very send-up of the national drama? Without, that is, simulating the drama? Without dissimulating, unwittingly or not, a complicity? Complicity in this case turned out to be systemic, unavoidable. It was engendered in the particular set of demands required of museum exhibitions, on the one hand, and required of the thematically controversial nature of "Black Male," on the other. This combination of demands - to embrace artwork and to regard it critically as representations - negotiated an institutional compromise in "Black Male." An interesting implication in Ellison's metaphor is that there may be a commutability between the situation (or body) of the "benevolent" white explorer, Gulliver, and that of the Negro giant; that the trussings that bind them stem from an arresting, objectifying tendency elicited through both the exploration of the other and self-exploration - and by extension, through both the exploratory museum pursuit and the (presumed) project of self-representation by artist or theme. …
Drawn largely from the Sheldon Museum of Art's permanent collection, Partners and Adversaries: Th... more Drawn largely from the Sheldon Museum of Art's permanent collection, Partners and Adversaries: The Art of Collaboration explores the productive and often ambivalent partnerships that coalesce around artistic practices. These include familial and romantic relationships, where ambitions and successes may clash and collide at the expense of one partner; the mutually dependent yet divergent interests of artists and their dealers; the dance of imitation and distinction between student and teacher; the official sanction of government support, everywhere shadowed by the threat of moralizing censure; and, increasingly in contemporary art, new processes and technologies that empower fabricators whom artists must collaborate with to achieve the results they desire. Partners and adversaries sound like contrasting entities-one desirable, one not. While we may seek out partners, we generally don't invite adversaries into our lives. We may, however, to our regret, find ourselves confronted by them. The truth, of course, complicates any easy distinction. So if adversaries appear unbidden, from where do they come? If we think about it, we realize that they lie nascent in our existing partnerships, whether at home, work, or in sports: what brings us together can drive us apart. In fact, the word partner itself registers this potential divisiveness. Stemming from Old French, the term builds on its antecedent sense of partition. Division is the precondition to partnership. Partners are defined, therefore, by the negotiation of their differences and the realignment of competing wills. What artistic partnerships have in common is the dynamic of collaboration. As such, they all require negotiations of power: some form of exchange, giving up a measure of authority to gain a benefit of another sort. This volume reviews some of these artistic partnerships in the following four essays. The first, by Jonathan Stuhlman, explores the work of Robert Henri and his role as teacher and mentor, touching on his relationship to several of the artists represented in Sheldon's collection, including George Bellows, Isabel Bishop, Elsie Driggs, Edward Hopper, and Rockwell Kent. Such relationships are akin to what literary critic Harold Bloom described as "the anxiety of influence" among poets-a tension that every artist grapples with to become independent of his teacher. Brandon Ruud, curator of Partners and Adversaries, contributes two essays. The first trains a sensitive eye on the partnership peculiar to artists and their models. It may seem
Winter and Silk Flowers, 1 998 gelatin silver print, 15'/. x 15'/. inches
Dates are subject to slight modification. Messaging: Text and Visual Art is a Sheldon Statewide e... more Dates are subject to slight modification. Messaging: Text and Visual Art is a Sheldon Statewide exhibition; Statewide is an outreach education and exhibitions program of the Sheldon Museum of Art. This exhibition is made possible by the generous support of Farmers Mutual Insurance Company of Nebraska, Lonnie Pierson Dunbier, the Sheldon Art Association, and the Nebraska Arts Council. Special thanks to Rhonda and James Seacrest.
U pon visiting the glass collection housed in the Esterling-Wake home, I began to imagine these r... more U pon visiting the glass collection housed in the Esterling-Wake home, I began to imagine these remarkable works on display in Sheldon's Great Hall. I pictured them in translucent splendor, imbibing the natural light that sweeps through the space daily. Few works in our collection can withstand the light from the cathedral-high windows at each end of the museum's nave. These exceptional objects, however, hold their own against the daylight and harness its energy in the service of their own visual beauty.
S heldon Museum of Art's recent acquisition of works by 20th-century African-American artists wil... more S heldon Museum of Art's recent acquisition of works by 20th-century African-American artists will give generations of patrons and students opportunities to view, reflect upon, and discuss masterworks by artists who have too often remained unheralded. The collection assembles poignant and intimate works that express the struggles, sorrows, joys, triumphs and creativity of African Americans.
Matthew, it seems, was a pragmatist. In reading fruit as if it disclosed the private identity of ... more Matthew, it seems, was a pragmatist. In reading fruit as if it disclosed the private identity of trees, he invites us to read the effects of things in order to understand what motivates the appearance of those effects. Matthew of course wasn't really concerned with fruit but with ...
Art Journal, 2005
a mere prop to significance; why it should be considered important is not examined. The installat... more a mere prop to significance; why it should be considered important is not examined. The installations and paintings by Vasan Sittikhet, on the other hand, don't immedi ately demand a nuanced engagement in their context or language. Their visual rhetoric shifts between neoexpressionism and the more bombastic tendencies of graffiti art, and the content is largely concerned with political corruption and perceived amorality in Thailand. While claims for the immediacy, urgency, and transparency, let alone political efficacy, of this mode of expression have long since been trashed in North American critical discourse, Sittikhet's work is gen uinely effective in lampooning establish ment mentalities in Thailand. His shows have
Uploads
Papers by Jorge Daniel Torres de Veneciano