ART CITIES:N.York-The Shape of Shape
The Artist’s Choice series began in 1989, when artist Scott Burton was “invited to select, juxtapose, and comment on” works from the MoMA’s collection. As then chief curator of Painting and Sculpture Kirk Varnedoe noted, “We have to recognize that a crucial part of the modern tradition is the creative response of artists to the works of their peers and predecessors”.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: MoMA Archive
For the “The Shape of Shape”, the 14th installment of MoMA’s Artist’s Choice series, Amy Sillman selected 75 works from the Museum’s Collectiom that, regardless of medium, movement, or period, share a fascination with shape. In this exhibition, Sillman presents a highly personal exploration of shape in modern art. Works spanning vastly different time periods, places, and mediums engage the eccentric forms and unpredictable contours of bodies, fragments, gestures, and shadows. Sillman examines the creation of shape as an act of subjective choice—in contrast to art made by following systems, rules, or grids, conventions that have often dominated artistic practice throughout the 20th Century. “The Shape of Shape” includes works by a diverse range of artists, including: Henri Matisse, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Louise Bourgeois, Romare Bearden, Thomas Mukarobgwa, Lois Lane, Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin, Jean (Hans) Arp, Anne Truitt and Valie Export. Reflecting on her curatorial process, Sillman said, “Even though shape is everywhere, we don’t talk about it much; it’s not a hot topic in art, like color or systems. So I decided to look for works in MoMA’s collection in which shape does prevail over other considerations. I found a wealth of artworks, far too many to include here, by artists who dig into life’s surfaces, who start with physical perception rather than abstract logic. Often eccentric, poetic, or intimate, these works are like bodies that speak, operating at the hub of language and matter, signs and sensations”. Amy Sillman is an influential contemporary American painter whose practice conflates the abstract and the figurative into large-scale, gestural oil paintings. Born in 1955 in Detroit, MI, Sillman received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York and her MFA from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson. Sillman began studying and working in painting in the mid 1970s. Her influences include the New York School (art), Abstract expressionism, and Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston. Sillman does not consider herself an Abstract Expressionist, stating, “I wanted to learn about both Abstract Expressionism and the critique of easel painting—not because I wanted to emulate them, but because I didn’t like them”. Sillman’s work is both abstract and representational, incorporating elements such as figuration, collage, and diagrammatic shapes.
Info: Curators: Amy Sillman with Michelle Kuo, Assistant Curator: Jenny Harris, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), 11 West 53 Street, New York, Duration: 8/10/19-12/4/20, Days & Hours: Mon-Thu & Sat-Sun 10:00-17:30, Fri 10:00-21:00, www.moma.org
