Unlike some art collectors, Katherine Dreier, one of the early major donors to the Yale University Art Gallery, believed that "a major work by a lesser artist is preferable to a lesser work by a major artist." In the years when she was one of the gallery's biggest patrons, the famous artist Josef Albers was teaching at the School of Art, where he made plain his conviction that art can be taught only through doing it, and, as he said, "being" it. Together, the influence of Dreier and Albers attracted some of America's most influential artists to study at Yale, and inspired adventurous collectors to donate great works of art to the University.
The ways in which Dreier's collecting practices and Albers' teaching methods helped form the University's collection of contemporary art is explored in the Yale Art Gallery's newest exhibition, "Then and Now and Later: Art Since 1945 at Yale," which opens on Tuesday, Feb. 10.
The exhibit is divided into two parts. "Then and Now" includes approximately 65 works by 48 artists, beginning with Piet Mondrian's "Foxtrot A" of 1931 and ending with a 1997 painting by Jasper Johns. The "Now and Later" section, which opens on March 27, includes work created by younger artists who graduated from the School of Art. The exhibit was organized by Joachim Pissarro, the Seymour H. Knox Jr. Curator of European and Contemporary Art; the "Now and Later" part was co-curated by Thomas Crow, the Lehman Professor of the History of Art.
"We are all impressed and pleased that Joachim Pissarro, who came from the Kimbell Museum only a few months ago, has so quickly organized an exhibition that offers challenging insights into the collecting and teaching of art and art history at Yale," says Helen A. Cooper, acting director of the Yale Art Gallery. "As the century ends, we do well to consider how we have reached this point, what we have accomplished, what has been overlooked, and where we are going."
The exhibition opens with a section called "The European Avant-Garde at Mid-Century," a group of works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Piet Mondrian, whose roots are in the Société Anonyme collection, which is on view in a related exhibition on the gallery's second floor. This collection was assembled between 1920 and 1950 by Dreier and Duchamp, and reflects Dreier's interest in artists who were "independent thinkers and doers," according to exhibit curator Pissarro. Her "infallible taste for unusual artistic expression," he adds, was also shared by such Yale Art Gallery patrons as Richard Brown Baker, Susan Morse Hilles and most recently, Thurston Twigg-Smith, among other generous donors.
The paintings in the second group of the exhibition are by émigrés who have taught in American universities. Albers, who chaired Yale's department of design (painting, sculpture and graphic arts)1950-58, is prominently featured in this section, which highlights the intersection of teaching and collecting art, Pissarro says.
The exhibit briefly reviews the significant art movements and art forms since World War II that relate either to Yale's collections and/or Yale-trained artists. "The New York School" includes works by Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock given to the gallery by Katharine Ordway, and masterpieces by Robert Motherwell and Franz Kline that were donated by Richard Brown Baker. A section on "Color Field Painting in the 1960s" highlights works by Mark Rothko, who attended Yale but did not graduate, as well as by Ad Reinhardt and other artists. Sculptures by Dan Flavin, Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd, and paintings by Brice Marden, are among the works in the space devoted to "Hard Edge Abstraction and Minimalism."
Other sections of the exhibit are "Return to Materials," which features works by Robert Morris and Yale-trained Eva Hesse; "New Expressions," which includes works by A.R. Penck and Jörg Immendorff from the private collection of Walter and Molly Bareiss; "Proto-pop and Post-painterly Abstraction," which showcases sculptures and paintings by Duane Hanson, Kiki Smith and Louise Nevelson; and "Pop Art," in which Andy Warhol, James Rosenquist, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Indiana are represented. Finally, in a section on "Painterly image and Post-photography," viewers will find Chuck Close's "Francesco 2" of 1988 and three small works by Gerhard Richter. The "Then and Now" half of the exhibit closes with Jasper Johns' "Untitled," completed just over one year ago, which the artist has lent to the exhibition.
The second half of the exhibit, "Now and Later," is a special loan exhibition that will feature works by such recent Yale School of Art graduates as Roni Horn, Jessica Stockholder, Matthew Barney and Ann Hamilton. This section will consider the impact of these artists on both Yale's collections and the art world of today and the future, according to Pissarro.
A number of lectures, films and special programs have been planned in conjunction with "Then and Now and Later: Art Since 1945 at Yale." These include an opening talk on Friday, Feb. 13, at 5 p.m. by Pissaro, the great-grandson of painter Camille Pissarro, and former director of the Musée de l'Hermitage in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Other gallery events related to the exhibition will be announced in a future issue of the Yale Bulletin & Calendar.
The Yale University Art Gallery, located at 1111 Chapel St., is open to the public free of charge Tuesday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-
5 p.m., and Sunday, 1-6 p.m. A museum entrance for persons using wheelchairs is located at 201 York St. For general information, call 432-0600. For further information about access, call 432-0606.