Yoko Ono. YOKO ONO MORNING PEACE 2015. Spring 2015. Ink on paper; drawing for the event
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Yoko Ono’s 1965 performance of Morning Piece in New York City. To commemorate Morning Piece and in conjunction with Yoko Ono: One Woman Show, 1960–1971</a>, MoMA and PopRally have organized YOKO ONO MORNING PEACE 2015, a global sunrise celebration on the summer solstice, Sunday, June 21.
The histories behind the works in the Museum’s collection are often as engaging as the art itself. We don’t always get to share these stories, but through our collection-based exhibitions we have the opportunity to highlight the previous lives of works on view. One that I was able to see installed for the first time since it formally entered the collection is Gilbert & George’s The Tuileries (1974), which is currently on view in the exhibition Gilbert & George: The Early Years.
Yoko Ono at The Museum of Modern Art’s Sculpture Garden. 2015. Photograph by Kishin Shinoyama. Courtesy Lenono Photo Archive, New York. © Yoko Ono 2015
The 32 canvases that make up Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans, a landmark in MoMA’s collection, are usually shown in a grid arranged in four rows of eight. For space reasons, this has typically been the most expedient way to exhibit them.
Andy Warhol. Campbell’s Soup Cans. 1962. Synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, each canvas: 20 x 16″ (50.8 x 40.6 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Partial gift of Irving Blum. Additional funding provided by Nelson A. Rockefeller Bequest, gift of Mr. and Mrs. William A. M. Burden, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund, gift of Nina and Gordon Bunshaft in honor of Henry Moore, Lillie P. Bliss Bequest, Philip Johnson Fund, Frances R. Keech Bequest, gift of Mrs. Bliss Parkinson, and Florence B. Wesley Bequest (all by exchange), 1996. ©2015 Andy Warhol Foundation/ARS, NY/TM Licensed by Campbell’s Soup Co. All rights reserved
But in the Museum’s current exhibition, Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967, for the first time at MoMA, and only the fourth time anywhere, they are being presented in a single line. Also for this occasion, the outer frames and Plexiglas barriers that usually cover the canvases have been removed, and the works have been propped on ledges. The paintings can be perused like groceries lining supermarket shelves.
Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Detail from Campbell’s Soup Cans
This presentation transforms our perception of the iconic series. When installed in a grid, the canvases can all be seen from a single vantage point. They become a tight unit of seemingly identical images that the eye takes in at once, like wallpaper. But when they are all in a single line at eye-level, wrapping around the gallery walls, it seems as if they could extend almost endlessly, and we are invited to slowly consider the paintings one by one. As we look, unexpected inconsistencies among these hand-painted canvases begin to emerge: the red paint sometimes feels closer to orange, there are variations in the black shadows on the silver tops, one soup can is missing a gold band, the fleur-de-lis stamped on the bottom of each varies…
This installation of Campbell’s Soup Cans was designed to recall the first time they were ever exhibited at the Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1962. Focusing on artists primarily from New York and Los Angeles, Ferus mounted a number of significant exhibitions in the 1960s, including the 1962 Soup Cans exhibition, which was Warhol’s first solo exhibition of paintings and is also considered the first Pop art exhibition on the west coast.
Andy Warhol at his 1342 Lexington Avenue studio with Campbell’s Soup Cans, 1962. Collection The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
Ferus director Irving Blum offered the show to Warhol, who was still relatively unknown as a painter, after he first saw six soup-can canvases in 1961 while visiting Warhol’s apartment on Lexington Avenue that doubled as a studio. (Blum went to see Warhol on the suggestion of Ivan Karp, associate director at the Leo Castelli gallery and an early and dedicated champion of Pop art). “…I walked down a corridor,” Blum later described, “and there were paintings of soup cans on the floor, leaning against the wall. I said, ‘Andy, what are those?’ He said, ‘Oh, I’m doing these now.’ And I said, ‘Why more than one?’… He said, ‘I’m going to do 32.’ I simply couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Why 32?’ He said, ‘There are 32 varieties.’” (Interview with Peter M. Brant, Interview Magazine, April 19, 2012)
After Warhol completed the canvases and sent them to Los Angeles (he was not able to get to L.A. to see the show himself), Blum hung them and placed a ledge beneath them because he was having difficulty making the paintings appear level. Later, when asked about this installation, Blum said, “Cans sit on shelves. Why not?” (Interview Magazine, 2012)
During the run of the exhibition, Blum sold five of the paintings, mostly to his friends, including the actor Dennis Hopper. But before the show was over, he changed his mind—he felt they should remain in a group. Once he managed to reclaim the works, he paid Warhol $1,000 for them in installments over a year (Kirk Varnedoe in Heiner Bastian, Andy Warhol, 2001).
Installation view, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1962, with Campbell’s Soup Cans. Photograph: Seymour Rosen. © SPACES—Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments
Blum hoped that eventually the paintings would find a home at a major museum, and in 1996, thanks to an initiative spearheaded by Kirk Varnedoe, former Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture, the paintings were acquired by MoMA as a partial gift of Irving Blum, and a partial purchase.
The current exhibition presents the soup-can paintings together with a selection of works Warhol made in the years before and after he completed them, highlighting their pivotal position in the artist’s career. They were made during the moment when Warhol was trying to transform himself from a commercial artist to a fine artist, right before he became a beacon of Pop art in the 1960s. The Campbell’s Soup Cans canvases are among Warhol’s earliest paintings based on American consumer goods, and some of his first works that feature serial images.
The canvases are also are among his last hand-painted works. Soon after completing them, he discovered silkscreen, the medium with which he is most closely associated. Whereas the soup-can paintings had been handcrafted to look as though they were mechanically produced, silkscreen actually was a mechanical—and commercial—process. It enabled Warhol to make a practically limitless number of precise repetitions and variations of his key subjects.
Installation view of Andy Warhol: Campbell’s Soup Cans and Other Works, 1953–1967 at The Museum of Modern Art, April 25–October 12, 2015. Photo: Jonathan Muzikar. © 2015 The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Shown:
Andy Warhol. Marilyn Monroe. 1967. Portfolio of 10 screenprints, each composition and sheet: 36 x 36″ (91.5 x 91.5 cm). The Museum of Modern Art. Publisher: Factory Additions, New York. Printer: Aetna Silkscreen Products Inc., New York. Edition: 250. The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. David Whitney, 1968. © 2015 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
He once explained his preference for silk-screening: “I find it easier to use a screen. This way, I don’t have to work on my objects at all. One of my assistants or anyone else, for that matter, can reproduce the design as well as I could” (Andy Warhol in Kaspar König, Andy Warhol, 1968).
Because we so often think of the Warhol who wanted to be a machine, rapidly turning out silkscreens, films, and photographs, it’s almost counterintuitive to think of him with brush in hand. Campbell’s Soup Cans holds a unique place in Warhol’s body of work: they are at once serial and singular, have a mechanical look, but were made manually, and in this exhibition—as they were at Ferus in 1962—they are both paintings on a wall, and cans on a shelf.
Romare Bearden (American, 1911−1988). The Visitation. 1941. Gouache, ink, and pencil on brown paper, 30 1/2 x 46 1/2″ (77.5 x 118.1 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (by exchange). Acquired with the cooperation of the Estate of Nanette Bearden and the Romare Bearden Foundation whose mission is to preserve the legacy of the artist. © Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Before Romare Bearden turned to the medium of collage in 1964—the multilayered compositions, for which he is best known—he was steeped in the language of drawing and painting. The Visitation (1941) (now on view in the exhibition One-Way Ticket: Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and Other Visions of the Great Movement North) exemplifies a critical early moment in the development of an artist who would become a leading voice in the cultural life of Harlem and in the history of American art. Recently acquired by MoMA, The Visitation returns to the Museum’s galleries for the first time since the 1971 retrospective Romare Bearden: The Prevalence of Ritual.
Mark Bradford (American, b. 1961). Untitled. 2012. Series of 14 etching and photogravures with chine-collé. Each sheet: 20 x 16″ (50.8 x 40.6 cm). Publisher: Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York. Printer: Lower East Side Printshop, New York. Edition: 25. Installation view, Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection, 2015–16, The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Committee on Prints and Illustrated Books Fund, 2014. © 2015 Mark Bradford. Photo: David Moreno
Scenes for a New Heritage: Contemporary Art from the Collection, a sweeping reinstallation of MoMA’s Contemporary Galleries, is a markedly cross-medium selection of works from the Museum’s collection. Created in the past three decades by more than 30 international artists, the works in the exhibition span a range of approaches that respond to the political, social, and cultural flux of our time.
Situated prominently in one of the final galleries, and on view at MoMA for the first time, Mark Bradford’s set of untitled 2012 etchings leave an unexpected mark—both literally and figuratively.
Jean Dubuffet. Textural Transcription I (Transcription texturologique I). 1958. Ink on paper, mounted on board, 9 x 14 1/4″ (22.9 x 36.2 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Joan and Lester Avnet Collection, 1978. Photograph by John Wronn. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Jean Dubuffet (French, 1901–1985) dedicated years to exploring and recording the natural textures he encountered in his daily life, from the mountainous, rocky landscapes of Vence and the sandy hills of El Goléa to dewy, foggy Parisian mornings or the stars far beyond our skies. Yet his most subtle and intricate depictions of surfaces may be a group of black-and-white ink-on-paper drawings created between 1958 and 1960.
In conjunction with the exhibition The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World, we invited several artists from the show to walk us through MoMA’s permanent collection galleries and discuss a few artworks. Revisiting key pieces in the Museum’s collection with these artists has truly given me a fresh perspective on the works themselves and their significance today.
The artists featured in The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World all draw inspiration from a dizzying array of art-historical styles and processes. Two years ago, in conjunction with the exhibition Inventing Abstraction, 1910–1925, MoMA asked contemporary artists to discuss works in the show that they found compelling. We thought it might be fun and enlightening to revisit this approach and invite several artists from The Forever Now into the Museum’s collection galleries to see which works pique their interest.
Installation view, Painting and Sculpture Galleries, The Museum of Modern Art. Shown: all works by Henri Matisse. © 2015 Succession H. Matisse, Paris/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
As the groundbreaking exhibition Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs enters its final weeks, visitors can rest assured that there’s more Matisse to discover at MoMA. Head to the fifth-floor Painting and Sculpture Galleries, where you’ll encounter an entire room devoted to Matisse’s early-20th-century work—an especially fertile period for this modern master—with an unexpected twist.
If you are interested in reproducing images from The Museum of Modern Art web site, please visit the Image Permissions page (www.moma.org/permissions). For additional information about using content from MoMA.org, please visit About this Site (www.moma.org/site).
© Copyright 2016 The Museum of Modern Art