manhattanguggenheim

MVRDV, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Let's Jump!, 2009, Digital print, 96.5 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © MVRDV.

Zhang Huan (b. 1965, An Yang City, Henan Province, China), Shark China, 2009, Watercolor and graphite on paper, 36.2 x 71.4 cm, Artwork © Zhang Huan

Terunobu Fujimori (b. 1946, Nagano, Japan), New York 2109, 2009, Colored pencil and ballpoint pen on paper, 35.6 x 71.1 cm, Artwork © Terunobu Fujimori.

Paul Pfeiffer (b. 1966, Honolulu), New Roof, Berlin Olympic Stadium, 2009, Digital print, 8.9 x 12.7 cm, Artwork © Paul Pfeiffer.

Doug Aitken (b. 1968, Redondo Beach, California), Untitled, 2009, Two digital prints, 96.5 x 68.6 cm and 97.8 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © Doug Aitken.

Matthew Ritchie (b. 1964, London), The House of GI–A Proposal, 2009, Ink on vellum paper, 72.1 x 100.3 cm, Artwork © Matthew Ritchie.

Anish Kapoor (b. 1954, Bombay), Untitled, 2009 (detail), Three digital prints, one print, 31.8 x 41.6 cm; two prints, 39.4 x 31 cm, Artwork © Anish Kapoor.

SelgasCano, Madrid, Erratic Void, 2009, Holographic print, 22.9 x 17.8 cm, Artwork © SelgasCano.

Pierre Huyghe (b. 1962, Paris), Return | Repetition | Intermittent, 2009, Ink on paper, 27.9 x 21.6 cm, Artwork © Pierre Huyghe.

Greg Lynn FORM, Venice, Liquid Plastic Robot, 2009, Digital print, 21 x 15.5 cm, Artwork © Greg Lynn FORM.

WORKac, New York, Flow Show, 2009, Digital print, 96.5 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © WORKac.

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
212-423-3500
New York
Contemplating the Void:
Interventions in the
Guggenheim Museum
February 12-April 28, 2010

Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site-specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim Museum invited more than two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in the space for the exhibition.

In a salon-style installation emphasizing the diverse range of the proposals received. Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, features renderings of these visionary projects.

Aristotle famously pronounced that nature abhors a vacuum, an idea that still resonates in art today. In designing the Guggenheim Museum, Wright flaunted the notion of the void, leaving the center tantalizingly (or threateningly) empty. Over the years, when creating site-specific installations or exhibition designs for the building, artists and architects have imbued the space with their presences, inspiring unforgettable works by Matthew Barney, Cai Guo- Qiang, Frank Gehry, Jenny Holzer, and Nam June Paik, among others. For the building’s 50th anniversary, the Guggenheim invited scores of artists to leave practicality or even reality behind in conjuring their proposals for the space. In this exhibition of ideal projects, certain themes emerge, including the return to nature in its primordial state, the desire to climb the building, the interplay of light and space, the interest in diaphanous effects as a counterpoint to the concrete structure, and the impact of sound on the environment. Conceived as both a commemoration and a self-reflexive folly, Contemplating the Void confirms how truly catalytic the architecture of the Guggenheim can be.

Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Among the many works in the exhibition are projects by artists Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Mike Nelson, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, Joris Laarman Studio, and Studio Job; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, junya.ishigami+associates, MVRDV, N55, Philippe Rahm, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8. In addition to the exhibition in the Thannhauser and Annex Level 4 galleries, Contemplating the Void will be accompanied by a comprehensive exhibition Web site, which will document each submission and feature introductory essays texts by Nancy Spector and David van der Leer.

Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum is organized by Nancy Spector, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, and David van der Leer, Assistant Curator for Architecture and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Peter Coffin (b. 1972, Berkeley, California), Untitled (Proposal), 2009, Digital print, 96.5 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © Peter Coffin.

Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS), Brussels, Experiencing the Void, 2009, Digital print, 48.3 x 33 cm, Artwork © Julien De Smedt Architects (JDS).

MAD Architects (Yansong Ma), Beijing, State Fair Guggenheim, 2009, Digital print, 94.5 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © MAD.

Acconci Studio (Vito Acconci), Brooklyn, New York, SPIDERMUSE(UM)…WRIGHT-O-WEB…SPINNING GUGGY…, 2009, Digital print, 193 x 135.9 cm, Artwork © Acconci Studio.

M/M, Paris, Morris in Guggenheim, 2009, Silkscreen ink on paper, 171.9 x 115.7 cm, Artwork © M/M.

Nari Ward (b. 1963, St. Andrews, Jamaica), Untitled, 2009, Graphite on paper, 96.5 x 68.6 cm, Artwork © Nari Ward.

Alyson Shotz (b. 1964, Glendale, Arizona), Untitled, 2009, Laserjet print, 48.3 x 33 cm, Artwork © Alyson Shotz.

Saunders Architecture, Bergen, Norway, FLW in His Element, 2009, Digital print, 48.3 x 32.7 cm, Artwork © Saunders Architecture.

West 8, Rotterdam, Netherlands, Perfection_Perversion, 2009, Digital print, 35.6 x 71.1 cm, Artwork © West 8.

Zaha Hadid Architects, London, Z Wave, 2006, Digital print on foamboard, 71.1 x 142.4 x 0.5 cm, Artwork © Zaha Hadid Architects.

Marc Chagall, Paris Through the Window (Paris par la fenêtre), 1913, Oil on canvas, 135.8 x 141.4 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift 37.438, © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Yves Tanguy, There, Motion Has Not Yet Ceased (Là ne finit pas encore le mouvement), 1945, Oil on canvas, 71.1 x 55.5 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Bequest, Richard S. Zeisler 2007.47, © 2010 Estate of Yves Tanguy/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Constantin Brancusi, The Sorceress (La sorcière), 1916-24, and Watchdog (Chien de garde), 1916, The Sorceress: walnut, on a limestone base; Watchdog: oak, 177.2 x 49.5 x 64.8 cm overall, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 56.1448, 58.1503, © 2010 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
212-423-3500
New York
Paris and the Avant-Garde: Modern Masters from the
Guggenheim Collection
January 23–May 12, 2010

During the first decades of the 20th century, numerous painters and sculptors migrated to Paris, which had become the international nexus for vanguard art. Bringing with them their diverse customs, these artists absorbed and contributed to the latest creative developments, often fusing novel formal elements with aspects of their respective local traditions and individual interests. Although the artists associated with the École de Paris (School of Paris) did not adhere to a fixed style typical of a school, they were united in their defiance of academicism.

As one of the final exhibitions of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s 50th-anniversary celebrations, Paris and the Avant-Garde: Modern Masters from the Guggenheim Collection presents 34 works by 18 artists from the Guggenheim Museum’s collection, including significant groups of sculpture by Constantin Brancusi and Alexander Calder. The exhibition is curated by Tracey Bashkoff, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, and Megan Fontanella, Assistant Curator.

One of the stylistic innovations during this period was Cubism, the name of which was accidentally coined in 1908 by French critic Louis Vauxcelles, who intended it to be derisory. Its leading practitioners were Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, who first met in 1907. Inspired in part by Paul Cézanne’s geometrized compositions, they created the simplified and faceted forms, flattened spatial planes, and muted colors that came to be associated with Analytic Cubism. The new technique blossomed with stunning rapidity from its inception through 1914, and led to further artistic experimentation among such painters as Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, František Kupka, and Fernand Léger, and sculptors like Brancusi.

Following the slowed productivity that occurred during World War I, the Parisian avant-garde resumed its heightened activities. Synthetic Cubism, which had emerged by 1913 and featured brighter colors, ornamental patterns, undulating lines, and rounded as well as jagged shapes, was common into the 1930s. The adherents of Surrealism — a movement inaugurated when André Breton published his first Surrealist manifesto in 1924 — were also counted as part of the School of Paris. These writers and artists, drawing in part on the theories of Sigmund Freud, attempted to give form to, or articulate notions of repressed desires, dream imagery, and the unconscious mind. Some juxtaposed dissociated images and incongruous objects, while others concentrated on automatism — drawing without a premeditated composition or subject.

With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the center of the art world shifted as numerous European artists, including many of the Surrealists, sought refuge in New York. Léger, Matta (Roberto Antonio Sebastián Matta Echaurren), and Yves Tanguy, among others, immigrated to the United States around this time. The American sculptor Calder had returned to the United States from Paris slightly earlier, in 1933, with a vocabulary of forms influenced by Jean Arp and Joan Miró that he proceeded to translate into his own language of movement and balance. Other artists, such as Miró and Picasso, remained in Europe, but were regularly featured in stateside exhibitions of the time, allowing an emerging group of American painters to encounter their work. With the end of the war and the advent of Abstract Expressionism, the primarily figurative painters that had embodied the Parisian avant-garde were displaced from the center of the art world.

Pablo Picasso, Mandolin and Guitar (Mandoline et guitare), Juan-les-Pins, 1924, Oil with sand on canvas, 140.7 x 200.3 cm, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York 53.1358, © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Anish Kapoor, Computer-generated image of Memory (2008) installed at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2008, Image: Courtesy Aerotrope Limited.

Anish Kapoor, Memory, 2008, Cor-Ten steel, 14.5 x 8.97 x 4.48 m, Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Installation view: Anish Kapoor: Memory, Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin, November 30, 2008-February 1, 2009, Photo: Mathias Schormann, © The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York.

Anish Kapoor, Svayambh, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, 2007.

Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue
212-423-3500
New York
Anish Kapoor: Memory
October 21, 2009-March 28, 2010

Memory (2008), a major new site-specific sculpture installation by leading international artist Anish Kapoor, is the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation’s first collaboration with the artist, who is celebrated for his expansive and profound aesthetic vision. The work is he 14th in a series of artist projects commissioned by Deutsche Bank and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin.

Since the late 1970s, Kapoor has extended the scope and language of contemporary sculpture through his explorations of scale, color, and the concept of the void. Constructed of Cor-Ten steel — a new material for the artist —Memory is a milestone for Kapoor. The work is composed of 154 Cor-Ten steel tiles, measures 14.5 x 8.97 x 4.48 meters overall, and weighs 24 tons. Its form nearly fills the gallery it occupies, challenging and altering the museum’s architecture through its improbable scale and proportions. The title, Memory, alludes to how visitors encounter the work, which can never be seen in its entirety and remains largely hidden from view.

This exhibition is made possible by Deutsche Bank.

Additional support is provided by the International Director’s Council of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Anish Kapoor: Memory was initiated in 2006 by Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and is curated by Sandhini Poddar, Assistant Curator of Asian Art. In early 2007, Kapoor was invited to create a site-specific work capable of engaging two very different exhibition locations: the Deutsche Guggenheim, where the work debuted in November 2008, and the Guggenheim Museum. “The Guggenheim Museum is delighted to present Anish Kapoor’s Memory in New York in our Deutsche Bank series of commissioned works by leading contemporary artists,” remarked Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and Museum. “This show is presented as part of the museum’s 50th Anniversary program, and underscores our commitment to the importance of working with living artists,” continued Armstrong.

Kapoor’s earlier large-scale site-specific installations, such as Taratantara (1999), Marsyas (2002), and Svayambh (2007), succeeded in creating new perceptions of space through their distortions of scale. Continuing these types of distortions, Memory’s enormous scale prevents viewers from perceiving a gestalt. The work divides the gallery space into several distinct viewing areas, which can be approached either from the museum ramps, elevator banks, or the adjacent gallery. Visitors to the Guggenheim Museum are compelled to navigate different sections of the building as each vantage point offers only a glimpse of either the sculpture’s exterior form or its interior shell. This processional method of viewing the sculpture is an intrinsic aspect of the work. Kapoor asks visitors to connect and construct the fragmented images of Memory retained in their minds and thus exert more effort in their acts of seeing. Kapoor calls this process creating a “mental sculpture.”

As a 24-ton volume of Cor-Ten steel, Memory is vast, ineffable, raw, and industrial. Compressed into one of the Guggenheim Museum’s annex galleries, the sculpture’s sheer volume is foreboding, as its peripheries glance against the gallery walls and ceiling with the utmost precision. From within, Memory’s seamless eight-millimeter-thick steel tiles, meticulously manufactured to ensure absolute darkness inside, read as one continuous form. Viewable only through a two-square-meter aperture, these seamless tiles create the boundless void of Memory’s cavernous interior. Kapoor has created a sculpture whose interior space seems much more vast than that defined by its exterior form. A staircase leading from the adjacent gallery offers a view through the aperture. The precise wedging of this hole into the gallery wall defines a flat, two-dimensional plane that, from a certain distance, appears as a painting rather than an opening. Kapoor’s interest in this pictorial effect is best reflected in his frequently quoted statement, “I am a painter working as a sculptor.”

This new commission was engineered by Aerotrope Limited and manufactured by Centraalstaal B.V. in Groningen, Netherlands.

Anish Kapoor was born in 1954 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, and currently lives and works in London. Kapoor has exhibited extensively both internationally and in London; his solo shows have included venues such as the Kunsthalle Basel; Tate Modern, London; Hayward Gallery, London; Museo national centro de arte Reina Sofia, Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid; CAPC Museé d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, France; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; and MAK–Österreichisches Museum für angewandte Kunst/Gegenwartskunst, Vienna. He represented Britain at the 1990 Venice Biennale and was awarded its Premio Duemila prize. He was the recipient of the prestigious Turner Prize, awarded in 1991. He has undertaken a number of major large-scale installations and commissions, including Taratantara (BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England, 1999, and Piazza del Plebicito, Naples, 2000-01), Marsyas (Tate Modern, London, 2002-03), Cloud Gate (Millennium Park, Chicago, 2004-present), Sky Mirror (Rockefeller Center, New York, 2006) and Svayambh (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2007-08). Kapoor also has a major solo exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in fall 2009.

The accompanying exhibition catalogue offers in-depth analyses of Kapoor’s creative intellectual process and documents Memory’s development from the initial models to its final form at the Deustche Guggenheim and the Guggenheim Museum. The richly illustrated publication features a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography, and provides a broad critical framework with multidisciplinary essays by Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Professor of Cultural Sociology, Ramapo College; Poddar; Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, university professor and Director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University; Steven Holl, Principal of Steven Holl Architects, with David van der Leer, Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; and Christopher Hornzee-Jones, Director, Aerotrope Limited. Priced at $45 (hardcover), the exhibition catalogue Anish Kapoor: Memory can be purchased at the Guggenheim Store or at the Online Store at guggenheimstore.org.

Portrait of Anish Kapoor, Photo: Phillipe Chancel, 2007.