Tag: Daily Art Moment

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Daily Art Moment: Marcel Dzama

Diorama displaying an array of figures dressed in business suits pointing rifles upward towards floating red flowers, birds and bats in flight, and two disembodied heads. The ground at their feet is strewn with animal corpses and more disembodied heads. The figures are grouped most densely at the left of the diorama. There are thirteen, all clad in brown suits. Only one figure at far left can be seen without a rifle. Instead, this figure looks on holding a cane and wearing a derby and a bow tie. At center, a large log separates the two groups of shooters. At right are eight shooters, similar in look to the rest. The area above the figures is filled with red birds and gray bats and a large, brown owl. Groupings of red flowers rise from the floor of the diorama and reach upward into the sky area. Two large heads float at far left and right of center. They stare straight ahead, have light-colored skin, dark hair, and blood seeping from their mouths. The floor of the diorama is scattered with various animal bodies and parts. Donkeys, birds, squirrels, and buffalo lie among large and small human heads. The scene is surrounded by darkness.

“I draw during the day, but my ideas come at night.” —Marcel Dzama Just before PAM closed temporarily, our team installed this large new acquisition by Marcel Dzama and not many people have had the chance to see it yet. We look forward to sharing this surreal life-size diorama with you soon! On the Banks…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Claude Monet

Honfleur, voiliers et phare (Honfleur, Sailboats and Lighthouse), Claude Monet, 18 ¼ x 12 ½ inches, pastel on blue paper. A vertical rectangular sketch of different sailing vessels and a seascape. The top half of the sketch shows five sailboats, sketched independently and oriented in two directions. At left, two boats can be seen on their sides as if drawn when the paper was turned horizontally. The one at top is gray and has broad sails. Below is a brown boat with two of its three sails lowered. At center is a larger boat with full white sails. At right top is a vessel in outlined gray and white. Below it is another boat in gray and pink. The lower half of the sketch shows a scene with a gray sailboat at left and a jetty and lighthouse across a body of water with a white cloud filled sky at right. Bottom right holds a brown boat again on its side. The individual sketches reveal the artist’s hand with loose, quick strokes of pastel. The artist’s signature is seen at bottom left.

Impressionist Claude Monet was a gifted painter as well as a talented and attentive draughtsman. This pastel—a recent gift to the Museum—is an informal study of various elements of a harbor, replete with a variety of sailing vessels and the distinctive jetty and lighthouse in the port city of Honfleur. Born in Paris, Monet grew…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Terresa White, Mark Tetpon, and Don Johnston

A multi-media sculpture composed of three main segments. At center is a bronze seal seen with its hind flippers at top and its head at bottom. A round opening in the center of the seal’s body holds a woman’s face partially covered by the profile of a silver-gray seal. Round ivory inlay circles in cream and orange are on the seal’s front flippers at bottom. Another round opening at the seal’s head holds woven baleen surrounding an ivory circle in cream and orange. Five brown spokes radiate out from each side of the central seal and are tied to dark, gently curving half hoops that cup the seal body. At the end of each spoke are ivory figures, each side mirroring the other. The sculptures are from bottom polar bears, seals, dancers holding drums and drumsticks, fish and ulus (knives). Facial features like eyes and noses and details on the dancers clothing are in black on the almost white ivory. The ulus have ivory handles with black dot decoration and short, dark fan shaped blades. The sculpture is topped with a hunter in a canoe set on the seal’s flippers. The hunter holds a fishing spear and coiled rope and wears wide-brimmed hat rendered in orange and cream ivory. The sculpture stands on a single post set into a round base.

Seal Vision: Shared Spirit celebrates the inter-related lives of seals with the people and animals of the far north. Echoing the format of Yu’pik dance masks, this striking mixed media sculpture is the result of a collaboration between Terresa White (Yup’ik), Mark Tetpon (Inupiaq) and Don Johnston (Qagan Tayagungin Aleut). There are so many stories…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Ralph Chessé

A square oil painting of a family of three dark skinned individuals: a male presenting figure, a female presenting figure and a child figure. The figures are highly stylized with thick, truncated bodies. Each has their head turned to the side showing a prominent jawline and flat eyes placed high on and close to the bridge of the nose. At center is the mother figure, she reaches out her arms grasping the child’s arm who stands on the right. The mother wears a yellow top, red skirt and an orange-red head covering. The child wears blue overalls and stretches his arms out to its mother. His head is tilted up, he has short curly hair with scalp peeking through. On the left the father figure stands slightly behind the mother in an opened neck pink shirt and blue pants. All three figures are barefoot. Brushwork appears thick, layered and rough. The family stands in a surreal setting: the brown floor they stand on almost appears to be a raft on which they float, the interior wall behind suggests a plaster wall with exposed wood lathe. A window with yellow curtains appears at right. The background is depicted as a deep blue sky with several white clouds. On either side of the family appear the outlines of bunches of green leaves. The painting is in a white square frame that shows exposed wood, looking scraped and worn.

Ralph Chessé experimented with a variety of styles from cubism to expressionism throughout his career, and the form of his work ranged from murals to puppetry, though painting took precedence. Much of his work prior to 1956 addresses African American themes or concerns, including his boyhood in New Orleans. In his retirement, he relocated to…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Jonathan Calm

Double Vision, Jonathan Calm, pigment print. A vertical rectangular photograph of man using a camera on a tripod near an oceanside cliff. The man is seen from the side, his camera pointed to the left. The camera has a large black bellows attached to a lens and stands on light colored wooden tripod legs. The man is mostly concealed under a dark cloth with only his bare legs and the fingers of one hand visible. He is dark skinned and barefoot. He stands on rough, brown ground with cliffs and the ocean behind his. The upper half of the photo contains a pale blue sky.

In the self-portrait Double Vision (Record), artist Jonathan Calm assumes the position of past and present-day landscape photographers—standing under a dark cloth, using a large-format view camera. He poses in the act of creating an image of the California coastline, a site long favored by revered “masters” of photography like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston.…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Larry Rivers

An Outline of History, from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence, color lithograph and screen print on paper, 41 x 32 inches. A horizontal rectangular depiction of our country’s Founding Fathers, seen outlined in brightly colored silhouettes on a cream ground. The figures are grouped, seated and standing, in familiar poses seen in illustrations of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Each figure has a line radiating outward from it with some of the figures having a name in addition to the line. At left is the first grouping showing some figures seated in the foreground and others seated in the background. They are made up of outlines in green, blue, yellow, bright pink, brown and dark grey. The lines are smudged within the outlines to give the figures a shadow of color. Names attached to some of these figures are: Rob Morris, Benjamin Harrison, Elbridge Gerry, Roger Sherman, Thomas, Lynch and Benjamin Rush. The center group features several standing figures and one seated figure. They are Sam Adams, John Hancock, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams. The figures are outlined in burnt orange, green, pink, blue and brown. The last grouping at right, shows seated and standing figures in gray, purple and blue in front of a green figure seated at desk in the background near other figures in yellow and brown. These are labeled William Paca, Stephen Hopkins and Lewis Morris. The lower quarter of the print is a very pale green providing a base for the figures. The artist’s signature is at lower right.

Something about the diagrammatic silhouettes and obscured labels in Larry Rivers’s An Outline of History hit differently when I came across it in PAM’s Online Collections today. The shapes and composition are so familiar that I instantly recognized the moment in American history. Yet I still imagined a multitude of alternative narratives filling the negative…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Hank Willis Thomas

Keep the Faith Baby, Hank Willis Thomas, 16 x 16 inches, letterpress on Coventry rag paper. A square print featuring the words “Keep the Faith Baby” surrounded by a black outline on a white background. All letters are capitalized with “Baby” in red, bold font and the rest in gray font. “Keep” appears on the first line, “the faith” on the middle line and “Baby” on the bottom line.

Back in November, we closed the national tour of the PAM-organized exhibition, Hank Willis Thomas: All Things Being Equal… The works in the exhibition stick with me and I continue to be moved by Thomas’s art that tells us so much about the history and the present in our country. Throughout the last year, I’ve…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Kitao Shigemasa

The First Month: New Year Visits, The Seven Herbs Ceremony, 9 12/16 x 7 ½ inches, color woodblock on paper. A vertical rectangular print divided into two scenes diagonally by a zigzagged line. The top half is further divided into a left half and a right half. The left shows a female figure dressed in a mauve and red kimono with her black hair pulled back in an elaborate hairstyle. She stands on a veranda looking through a doorway to an interior. Behind her are white gift boxes stacked on green tatami flooring. At right, a young man in a mauve and green patterned kimono writes on a sheaf of paper that is tied to a small pine tree. Behind him, another man, carries gifts while looking off to the right. This man is bald on top and wears a green kimono with a sword tucked under his arm. At top right, a rectangle contains Japanese writing. The lower half of the print is separated from the top by a zigzagged diagonal line that starts above center left and continues to below center right. The scene below shows a man at left seated in front of a low table while chopping vegetables. He is bald and wears a mauve patterned kimono and holds a chopping tool in his hand while gesturing to a guest that has arrived. Next to him are a pile of vegetables on one side and on the other, a candle in a tall stand. The guest, at right, is an older woman wearing a green kimono and holds a daikon radish. She is approaching a set of steps that leads to the area with green tatami flooring the man sits upon. Behind the man are two female figures, one kneeling and gesturing towards the visitor, the other standing. They both wear kimono and are positioned near an open doorway. Beyond the doorway a blossoming tree can be seen against a black night sky.

This print is one of 12 split-screen compositions that represent each month of the year. Much like writing resolutions or eating black-eyed peas, The First Month shows activities associated with New Year celebrations. At the top, a handsome young man writes New Year greetings on a sheaf of paper tied to the decorative pine. A…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Haudenosaunee / Iroquois artist

Haudenosaunee/Iroquois artist, Pouch, 8 x 4 inches, cotton, silk and glass beads. A photo of a colorful U-shaped pouch with handle against a gray background. The pouch is slightly narrower at the top then widens at the bottom. At the center, set against black velvet is a large, white, beaded flower topped by a pink, beaded flower with pale green, gold, and blue, beaded leaves. Surrounding the flowers are white and brick-red beadwork lines composed of three white beads, two larger brick-red beads, then three white beads. Each line radiates outward from the flowers at center. Two lines of white beading encompasses the center designs running along the edge of the pouch. At the outer edge of the pouch is a red cotton border with loops of gold beads along the sides and turquoise blue beaded loops along the bottom. Some areas of beading are missing at the bottom center and at the left edge. The top of the pouch shows a thin, short, tan cotton handle. Pale blue ribbon embellishes the opening of the pouch but is partially missing, exposing the hand stitching along the pouch’s opening.

This small but ornate pouch represents a very distinctive beadwork innovation created by Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) artists in the mid- to late-19th century. Small fabric bags, pin cushions, photo frames and other purely decorative forms, known as “whimsies,” were beaded with thick layers of stacked beadwork. The artists often favored translucent beads on black or bright…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Sara Cwynar

Encyclopedia Grid (Acropolis), Sara Cwynar, 40 x 32 inches, chromogenic print mounted on Plexiglass. A vertical rectangular print showing 51 postcard size images of the Acropolis arranged on a blue felt ground. The images are different sizes, both in color and black and white and mostly in a landscape format. Each also contains the image of a finger or two as if holding the picture. They are arranged in five vertical rows with the last row at right having an additional two images in portrait format. One of these images is the only one that does not show the Acropolis but instead a black and white picture of palm fronds and a banana bunch with a fingertip in color.

Sara Cwynar’s Encyclopedia Grid (Acropolis) tugs at my wanderlust. During the pandemic, I’ve traveled very little and have not been very far from Portland. Here, Cwynar arranges what appear to be clips and cuttings of the ancient Acropolis in Athens, Greece on a blue backdrop. Each image in the grid shows a finger placed on…  Read more