Miró: The Experience of Seeing

Now to January 10, 2016

Miró: The Experience of Seeing presents a rare opportunity to introduce American audiences to the astounding and innovative paintings and sculptures that Joan Miró (1893–1983) created in his later years. Comprised of 57 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, this exhibition is the first dedicated to the fruitful period of the artist’s life in the United States. The exhibition focuses on Miró’s late period with works beginning in the 1960s, a chapter that even today remains mostly overshadowed by his contributions during the interwar and immediate postwar periods. Miró’s works during those mature years represent a more personal language, where neither painting nor sculpture takes precedence. Instead, approaching these disciplines again from his original perspective, he set out to explore their conceptual limits by questioning their very nature.

The paintings and sculpture in the exhibition closely examine aspects of the art-making process, part of the basis of his output since his earliest works. In his quest to transcend the idea of easel painting, the pictorial space is enlarged across expanded canvas fields, on which calligraphic signs reach maximum intensity through minimum resources, reflecting the artist’s attempt to reach a square one of painting through simplicity and emptiness. Assembling found objects, and adding techniques such as modeling and bronze casting, also meant that he could create a work that somehow bestrode all of modern sculpture’s possibilities for expression. Without ever being part of any formal categories, Miró continually changed his expressive medium, developing a process of intervention-reaction in the various series that he worked on for extensive periods. The modifications he introduced affected the group’s final equilibrium, always reiterating in both media the same conceptual aspects and technical solutions: simplicity, flatness, line, gesture, and ideogram.

Miró: The Experience of Seeing was conceived by Chief Curator of Sculpture Carmen Fernández Aparicio and Chief Curator of Paintings Belén Galán Martín, under the guidance of Rosario Peiró, Chief Curator of the permanent collection at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, Spain. The McNay exhibition is the final presentation before the works are returned to Spain.

Also on Exhibit at the Nay:

Martín Gutierrez: Transcending Rhythm

Now to January 10, 2016

Martín Gutierrez’s music videos, four of which are shown together here, explore self-transformation and the intersection of fantasy and reality. His videos subvert typical gender tropes, thereby forcing viewers to come to their own conclusions. In Clubbing, a video from Gutierrez’s undergraduate years, the artist plays multiple characters, both male and female, in a bid to supplant ideas of traditional identity. Trio appears to display Gutierrez's form inserted in a bleak desert landscape. The artist manipulates images of his figure—in triplicate—in order to arouse in the viewer questions of identity and reality.

Both Blame the Rain and If feature the character Martine, Gutierrez’s singer persona. These works examine the status of celebrity, media, and subculture through videos that are written, sung, and produced by Gutierrez alone. The artist describes these music videos as explorations on the theme of pop singer “Lana del Rey goes to the Caribbean and is still sad.”

Martín Gutierrez was born in 1989 in Berkeley, California, to an American mother and Guatemalan father, and as an adolescent moved to rural Vermont. The artist received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012. Gutierrez is based in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been featured in numerous publications, including the Daily Beast, New York Times, New York Magazine, and Paper Magazine.

Art History Goes to the Theatre: Research Secrets of Great Designers

Now to January 31, 2016

Giotto, El Greco, Veronese, Degas, Monet, Seurat, Klimt, Kirchner, Delaunay, Mondrian, Ernst, O’Keefe, Nevelson, Stella. The names of these, and other, visual artists may not appear in playbills. As this exhibition demonstrates, however, their paintings and sculpture have played leading roles in theatre productions. Whether quoted directly, or exerting a more subtle influence, works of art can be essential to how designers and their collaborators envision the worlds they create on stage.

For scene and costume designers, paintings, sculpture, and prints, are invaluable historical documents, recording polychrome reliefs in Egyptian temples or elegant garments at Italian Renaissance courts. The works of well-known artists also function as cultural shorthand. By referencing El Greco, Monet, O’Keefe, or Bearden, designers evoke the austerity of Hapsburg Spain, the excitement of modern Paris, the vastness of the American West, or the rhythms of African-American jazz.

In the hands of visionary designers, art history can actually shape the underlying concept of theatre productions. When the ruthless philanderer Don Giovanni meets his fiery end, it takes the form of the Last Judgment from Medieval churches. The enlarged and fragmented imagery of Pop Art convey the dehumanizing effects of war in Die Soldaten (The Soldiers). These references not only add new layers of meaning to theatre but also call attention to how, and why, certain works of art continue to capture the imagination

Picasso, Braque, and the Cubist Legacy: Prints and Drawings from the Collection

Now to January 24, 2016

The McNay has a very fine collection of Cubist prints and drawings, including a particularly fine group of etchings and drypoints by Georges Braque. The museum has made a concerted effort in the last few years to add to this strength of the collection. These new acquisitions not only provide fascinating context for the work of Pablo Picasso and Braque but show the different ways various artists used the ideas introduced by those pioneers of Cubism. This exhibition will be the first time the public has a chance to see newly acquired works by Louis Marcoussis, Jean-Emile Laboureur, and Henri van Straten alongside the Picasso and Braque works that inspired them. Comparing the prints and drawings in the show will reveal how each artist used Cubist elements in different ways, contributing to the evolution of modern art throughout the twentieth century. The show will show how Cubism inspired or influenced other important art movements of the twentieth century, including Futurism and Expressionism. Both American and European prints and drawings will be included to show the reach of Cubist ideas not only over time but across the Atlantic as well.

Some of the other artists included in the exhibition are Fernand Leger, Albert Gleizes, Burgoyne Diller, Stuart Davis, Werner Drewes, Sybil Andrews, C.R.W. Nevinson, Mildred Rackley, and Fannie Hillsmith.