Date: Fri 25-Jun-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: SHIRLE

Quick Words:

Virginia-Museum-acquisitions

Full Text:

Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts Announces Six New Acquisitions

(with 2 cuts)

RICHMOND, VA. -- An important wall drawing by eminent American artist Sol

LeWitt, an ancient African terra-cotta sculpture, and works by contemporary

American artists Elizabeth Murray, Willie Cole and Chuck Close have been

acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Also added to the museum's collection was a Nineteenth Century watercolor,

"The Misadventure of Rawal Lakhan Sen," from the Bikaner School in the

Rajasthan region of India.

"The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is privileged to have privately endowed

funds that, because they are restricted for art purchases, allow us to add

important works to Virginia's treasure house of original works of art," says

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts director Katharine C. Lee.

The LeWitt work, titled "Wall Drawing #541," is an installation piece first

shown in 1987 at the Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris. LeWitt (born 1928) first

came to prominence in the mid-1960s as a pioneer of Conceptual Art, an

international movement that emphasized the idea of an artwork more than its

physical form.

The wall drawing will be installed in the Lewis Contemporary Galleries in

early 2000.

The African Terra-cotta sculpture, "Head with Torso," has been determined

through thermoluminescence testing to date from somewhere between 500 BC and

200 AD, according to Richard Woodward, the museum's curator of African art.

It is a superb early example of terra-cotta sculpture from the Niger River

basin where it emerges from the Sahara. The figure stands 21 inches tall. The

museum also acquired a second Sokoto terra-cotta representing a head.

The painting by Murray (born 1940) is a 1997 oil-on-canvas-on-wood work

measuring approximately ten feet by nine feet. The title, "Summer Wind,"

suggests a pastoral scene, says John Ravenal curator of art after 1900.

The 1999 Willie Cole work, "Fast Track Home," measures roughly six by six feet

and reflects the artist's African-American heritage, says Ravenal. Since the

mid-1980s, Cole (born 1955) has used electric irons in his work --

reassembling their parts to make sculpture, inking their surfaces to make

prints, or searing them onto paper and canvas surfaces.

"Fast Track Home" is a scorched-canvas work. The surface of the canvas is

covered with overlapping marks resembling crucifix forms made by a superheated

iron. In some areas, the iron has burnt through the canvas, underscoring the

intensity of the act of scorching.

American artist Chuck Close (born 1940) is known for his monumental images of

the faces of his family and friends. The museum's acquisition, titled "John,"

is a 1998 silkscreen measuring approximately 5« by 4« feet.

The print is based on the artist's 1992 painting of the same title, which was

shown at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 1993. The face is that of artist

John Chamberlain, three of whose sculptures are also included in the museum's

collection.

Close used multiple screens to apply 126 colors in this work, which is a

tour-de-force of printmaking. The final image closely replicates the painting

and offers a "powerful representation of Close's late style," Ravenal says.

The museum's new Indian painting, an opaque watercolor on paper measuring

almost 13 by 15 inches, dates from about 1825 to 1850.

It depicts an old reprobate sprawling -- possibly drunk -- on a terrace, his

turban toppled to the ground and flies swarming around him. A young woman

reclining on a bed regards the old man with contempt. The terrace they occupy

is defined by a pierced white balustrade and a two-story palace. Clouds and a

garden fill the background.

An inscription identifies the old man as Lakhan Sen, an obscure Thirteenth

Century rawal , or king, who was reputed to be a simpleton.

Dr Joseph M. Dye III, the museum's E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter curator of

South Asian and Islamic art, says the museum's new watercolor is one of the

finest Bikaner paintings of Lakhan Sen. It was purchased with funds from the

Friends of Indian Art (a museum support group) and the Robert and Ruth Fisher

Fund.

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is at 2800 Grove Avenue.