FROM BAUHAUS TO POP: MASTERWORKS GIVEN BY PHILIP JOHNSON
June 6–September 3, 1996
The Museum of Modern Art honors seven decades of contributions by one of its
most dedicated supporters with From Bauhaus to Pop: Masterworks Given by Philip
Johnson, a selection from the hundreds of works he has donated to the Museum.
Presented in honor of the renowned architect's ninetieth birthday, the
exhibition, which opens June 6, features paintings, sculptures, and drawings,
as well as posters, design objects, and architectural models and drawings, many
of which epitomize their genres and have become icons of modern art. In
conjunction with the exhibition, Philip Johnson has organized a special
installation of works in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, the
celebrated space he designed in 1953.
On view through September 3, the exhibition is organized by Kirk Varnedoe,
Chief Curator, and Robert Storr, Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture,
with Terence Riley, Chief Curator, and Christopher Mount, Assistant Curator,
Department of Architecture and Design. The installation of the Sculpture Garden
is made possible by a generous grant from the Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller
Fund. In addition to the exhibition, the Museum's annual gala, The Party in the
Garden, on June 5, will be dedicated to Mr. Johnson this year. [Separate
release available.]
According to Glenn D. Lowry, Director of The Museum of Modern Art, From Bauhaus to Pop
recognizes Mr. Johnson's support of the Museum since 1930, when
he joined the Advisory Committee of the fledgling institution. For more than
sixty years, his contributions as a curator, donor, architect, and Trustee have
aided MoMA's development as the world's foremost museum of modern art."
Mr. Johnson was director of the Museum's newly created Department of
Architecture from 1932 to 1934 and from 1946 to 1954. (The area was renamed the
Department of Architecture and Design in 1949.) As a curator, he organized
some of the most influential exhibitions in his field, including the
groundbreaking 1932 show Modern Architecture: International Exhibition,
co-organized with Henry-Russell Hitchcock; the 1934 Machine Art exhibition of
twentieth-century industrial design, from which the Museum took the nucleus of
its Design Collection; and Deconstructivist Architecture, in 1988, co-organized
with Mark Wigley. Mr. Johnson designed the 1964 additions to the building, as
well as the Sculpture Garden. He was elected to the Board of Trustees in
1957.
From Bauhaus to Pop recognizes one of the architect's greatest contributions to
the Museum—the art he has donated to the collection, or provided funds for,
since 1932. Beginning with gifts of important German paintings in the 1930s and
1940s, Mr. Johnson went on to make extensive donations of postwar art; his
gifts in the areas of Abstract Expressionism, Pop art, and Minimalism are among
the Museum's masterpieces.
Selections of Painting and Sculpture
In all, some eighty paintings, sculptures, and drawings will be on view in the
Museum's first-floor International Council Galleries. Highlights include:
Otto Dix's uncompromisingly realistic portrait of Dr. Mayer-Hermann (1926),
Mr. Johnson's first gift to the Museum in 1932. Acquired just six years after
it was painted, it was the first instance of Mr. Johnson's donation of very
contemporary work, a continuing legacy that has lent the collection an
important immediacy.
Oskar Schlemmer's Bauhaus Stairway (1932), purchased by Mr. Johnson at
the request of Alfred H. Barr, Jr., MoMA's first director, an early
demonstration of the Barr/Johnson partnership that led to the donation of so
many important works.
Classic examples of Abstract Expressionism by Barnett Newman (Abraham
of 1949), Mark Rothko (Number 10 of 1950), and Franz Kline (White
Forms of 1955).
Jasper Johns' Flag (1954–55), purchased by Mr. Johnson from Johns'
first solo exhibition and later donated to the Museum in honor of Mr. Barr.
The Museum's first Andy Warhol, Gold Marilyn Monroe (1962), acquired
immediately after it was painted, as well as Orange Car Crash Fourteen
Times (1963), an important example of the artist's disaster pictures,
donated in 1991.
Other works by important artists including Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy
Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, and
Frank Stella.
Architecture and Design
Some seventy gifts from Mr. Johnson to the Department of Architecture and
Design will be on view in the Projectsgallery across from the Garden
Hall. Highlights include:
Objects from the Jan Tschichold Collection of posters, letterheads, books,
and brochures. Produced during the "graphic arts revolution" of the 1920s and
1930s, they personify modern graphics with their bold, asymmetrical, simplified
style.
A glass and chrome-plated table lamp by Wilhelm Wagenfeld and Karl J. Jucher
(1923–24) that embodies the ideals of Bauhaus design, with its embrace of
geometric forms and rejection of applied ornament.
Architectural models and drawings, including a drawing of the Seagram
Building by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
Classic design objects by Josef Hoffmann, Mies van der Rohe, Joseph Maria
Olbrich, and Gerrit Rietveld, among others.
Special Garden Installation
For his special exhibition of works in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture
Garden, Mr. Johnson was given complete access to the Museum's vast sculpture
collection. Choosing works for what he describes as "their scale in relation to
the garden," Mr. Johnson installed twenty-one works, eleven of which are not
usually on view in the garden. These include Max Beckman's Self-Portrait
(1936), Louise Bourgeois's Sleeping Figure, II (1959), Alberto
Giacometti's Spoon Woman (1926–27), and Jacques Lipchitz's Gertrude
Stein (1920).
According to Kirk Varnedoe, "As architect of the Sculpture Garden, Mr. Johnson
has a special vision for the way space is articulated and the way sculpture
works within it. With this new sculpture installation for the garden, visitors
to the Museum will have the unique opportunity to explore and experience this
vision in depth—to see the way the garden's creator imagines architecture,
sculpture, space, and the natural environment working together." The
installation will be on view until the end of the summer.
For further information contact Mary Lou Strahlendorff, Department of
Communications, 212/708–9755.
