National Gallery of Art | Videos

Drawing on one of the earliest forms of photographic technology, Vera Lutter (German, b. 1960) creates monumental photographs of compelling architectural spaces. She first builds a camera obscura by darkening the interior of closed spaces—a suitcase, shipping container, or apartment—and leaving a small pinhole opening for light to enter. Placing light-sensitive paper opposite the opening, Lutter then exposes an image of the exterior view on the paper for an extended period of hours, days, even months. The unusually long exposure time challenges notions of photography’s instantaneity, producing images that capture the passage of time rather than a singular moment. For Ca' del Duca Sforza, Venice II: January 13–14, 2008 Lutter transformed a room in the Palazzo Sforza into a camera to create a stunning and uncanny view of the Grand Canal in Venice.

Justin Wolff, associate professor of art history, University of Maine. In November 1937 Life magazine featured four lithographs by the American artist Rockwell Kent (1882-1971) in the article “Four Ways in Which the World May End.” In this lecture from the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held at the National Gallery of Art on October 22, 2016, Justin Wolff analyzes the so-called “End of the World” lithographs, part of the National Gallery of Art collection, in the context of scientific theories about cosmic cataclysm, suspicions that European fascism portended an apocalypse, and Kent’s solidarity with a radical leftism that anticipated capitalism’s disintegration. Wolff considers looking beyond their political meaning to what the lithographs tell us about Kent’s renowned emotional intensity and wanderlust—specifically, what they reveal about his tenacious quest to acquire psychic integrity in barren lands at the ends of the world. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Nina L. Dubin, associate professor of art history, University of Illinois at Chicago. On the occasion of the exhibition Hubert Robert, 1733–1808 at the National Gallery of Art, Nina Dubin presented a lecture on September 26, 2016, that examined a series of Hubert Robert’s paintings from the 1780s. The theme of these works is courtship menaced by the potential for calamity. Male suitors climb ladders in an attempt to procure flowers for their female love interests or cling to tree branches while trying to secure a token of their affection in the form of a bird’s nest. No less than his contemporaneous views of Paris—evocations of a city vacillating between prosperity and ruin—Robert’s chronicles of the rise and potential fall of a man in love embody the suspenseful confluence of dread and hope that characterized the prerevolutionary period. As Dubin argues, it is no accident that in such a climate, Robert would take up the theme of a lover’s potential mishap: along with the ancient myths of Icarus, Phaethon, and others who fatally believed they could defy the force of gravity, the folly of love furnished eighteenth-century audiences with a shorthand means of coming to terms with the dawning ethereality—the manias, fads, and bubbles—of modern existence.

Paige Rozanski, curatorial assistant, department of modern art, National Gallery of Art. In this lecture held on September 26, 2016, as part of the Works in Progress series at the National Gallery of Art, Paige Rozanski sheds light on the discoveries she made during her research at the Dwan Gallery Archives and the Virginia Dwan Archives in preparation for the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971. Rozanski underscores the integral role this material played in planning the exhibition, illustrates how the archives contributed to scholarship, and outlines her approach to writing the chronology and exhibition history published in the exhibition catalog.

Randall Griffey, associate curator, department of modern and contemporary art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. American painter Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) entered the modernist canon as a result of the abstract paintings he created in Germany in 1914-1915. But the paintings he created of his home state of Maine late in his career beginning in 1937 brought him his greatest acclaim during his lifetime. In fact, Hartley began his career in 1909 at Alfred Stieglitz’s 291 gallery as a painter of Maine. Previewing a major exhibition to open in March 2017 at the Met Breuer and in July 2017 at the Colby College Museum of Art, Randall Griffey illuminates the painter’s dynamic, rich, and occasionally contradictory artistic engagement with his native Maine. Maine was to Hartley a springboard to imagination and creative inspiration, a locus of memory and longing, a refuge, and a means of communion with previous artists who painted there, especially Winslow Homer. Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Griffey showcases Hartley’s impressive range, from early post-impressionist interpretations of seasonal change in the region to late, folk-inspired depictions of Mount Katahdin, the state’s great geological landmark. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Rachael Z. DeLue, associate professor, department of art and archaeology, Princeton University. The modern American artist Arthur Dove (1880–1946) drew inspiration from the natural world when making his paintings and assemblages, but he also played around with found objects, popular music, sound technology, aviation, farm animals, meteorology, language, and script, including his own signature. The circle motifs that appear persistently across Dove’s art serve to signify and connect these disparate things, creating a vital and unique form of abstraction, one resolutely if paradoxically bound to objective reality and material existence. As Dove himself said, “there is no such thing as abstraction,” preferring the term “extraction” to describe the essential relationship between his work and the world. Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Rachael Z. DeLue discusses some of the chief characteristics of Dove’s extractions, focusing on examples from the Gallery’s collection. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Narrated by John Lithgow, this film was made in conjunction with the exhibition Stuart Davis: In Full Swing. Stuart Davis (1892 –1964) was an American original. Trained as a realist painter, he became a pioneering abstract artist after seeing works by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Matisse, Picasso, and other European modernists at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Davis’s exuberant, colorful compositions echo the dynamism of the American scene and the rhythms of jazz, the artist’s lifelong passion. This documentary surveys his career and includes original footage shot on location in New York and Gloucester, Massachusetts; interviews with scholars and a musician; images of Davis’s paintings; and archival footage and photographs of the artist. Produced by the department of exhibition programs. This film was made possible by the HRH Foundation.

Jennifer Raab, assistant professor, department of the history of art, Yale University. What does it mean to see a work of art “in detail”? Speaking at the inaugural John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art, held on October 22, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Jennifer Raab considers broader questions of detail, vision, and knowledge in 19th-century America by looking at a few of Frederic Church’s most famous landscape paintings. The John Wilmerding Symposium on American Art is made possible by a generous grant from The Walton Family Foundation.

Swiss artist Jean Tinguely spent several months in Los Angeles in 1963 preparing for a Dwan Gallery exhibition, his studio a former factory rented by the dealer. Fellow artist Edward Kienholz escorted Tinguely and Virginia Dwan to a local hardware store where Tinguely gathered motors to operate his kinetic sculptures. The viewer operates Odessa by pressing a floor pedal, causing the sculpture to whir to life.

In April 1969, Virginia Dwan joined artists Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt on a journey to Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The trio visited ancient Maya sites and took a boat ride on the Usumacinta River with Dwan filming their journey in Super 8 stock. Reflecting on her various travels, Dwan wrote, “I see the journeys as both adventure and metaphor of my ongoing quest for that which is beyond the clamor and the inherent struggles of contemporary life.”

Swiss artist Jean Tinguely spent several months in Los Angeles in 1963 preparing for a Dwan Gallery exhibition. In this kinetic portrait, Tinguely depicts gallery owner Virginia Dwan as a delicate arrangement of wires, a fireplace andiron, a radio circuit board, and a motor that causes the tuning dial to flicker between stations.

Virginia Dwan, collector, and James Meyer, deputy director and chief curator, Dia Art Foundation. The remarkable career of gallerist and patron Virginia Dwan is featured front and center for the first time in an exhibition of some 100 works, including highlights from Dwan's promised gift of her extraordinary personal collection to the National Gallery of Art. Founded by Dwan in a storefront in Los Angeles in 1959, Dwan's West Coast enterprise was a leading avant-garde space in the early 1960s, presenting works by abstract expressionists, neo-dadaists, pop artists, and nouveaux réalistes. In 1965, Dwan established a gallery in New York where she presented groundbreaking exhibitions of such new tendencies as minimalism, conceptual art, and land. The exhibition traces Dwan's activities and the emergence of an avant-garde gallery in an age of mobility, when air travel and the interstate highway system linked the two coasts and transformed the making of art and the sites of its exhibition. On September 27, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art, Virginia Dwan and James Meyer join in conversation to celebrate the opening week of the exhibition Los Angeles to New York: Dwan Gallery, 1959–1971, on view from September 30, 2016, through January 29, 2017.

Artists Leonardo Drew and Jennie C. Jones with Pamela J. Joyner, collector. The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art is widely recognized as one of the most significant collections of modern and contemporary work by African and African Diasporan artists. Four Generations: The Joyner Giuffrida Collection of Abstract Art draws upon the collection’s unparalleled holdings to explore the critical contributions made by artists to the evolution of visual art in the 20th and 21st centuries. Extensively illustrated with hundreds of works in a variety of media, and featuring scholarly texts by leading artists, writers, and curators, Four Generations gives an essential overview of some of the most notable artists and movements of the last century, up to and including works being made today. The collection features major works by artists such as Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, Alma Thomas, David Hammons, Sam Gilliam, Lauren Halsey, Oscar Murillo, Jayson Musson, Robin Rhode, Zander Blom, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. In honor of the book publication, Pamela J. Joyner joins artists Leonardo Drew and Jennie C. Jones in this conversation held on September 25, 2016, at the National Gallery of Art as part of the series, The Collecting of African American Art.

This 6-minute film features works from the exhibition In the Tower: Barbara Kruger, presenting Kruger’s profile works—images of faces or figures seen in profile, over which the artist has layered attention-grabbing phrases and figures of speech. The film is narrated by the artist, who discusses her background, process, and methodology. It covers Kruger’s early career beginning in the 1970s as she transitioned from her work as a layout editor for Condé Nast to the art world. By the end of the decade she had begun her “picture practice,” a conceptual approach that involved culling images from manuals and magazines and adding attention-grabbing language using her signature style of direct-address, complete with personal pronouns and active verbs. Kruger’s work now spans a variety of formats, from paste-ups to large-scale silkscreens and photographs, billboards, multichannel videos, and book-cover designs. This film was made possible by the HRH Foundation.

Carlos Garaicoa, artist, in conversation with Michelle Bird, curatorial assistant, department of French paintings, National Gallery of Art, and Andrea Nelson, associate curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art. Carlos Garaicoa Manso (b. Havana, Cuba, 1967) studied thermodynamics before his mandatory military service, during which he worked as a draughtsman. He then attended the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana from 1989 to 1994. Garaicoa takes a multidisciplinary approach in his art to address the social, economic, and political issues that affect our construction of subjectivities and understanding of the contemporary global situation. His work—which uses studies of architecture, city planning, the writing of history, and the tradition of aesthetic forms as a language—articulates a cultural criticism that debates the function of the artistic act and of intellectuals and artists as social agents in the public sphere. His work takes a variety of forms, including installations, videos, photographs, sculptures, pop-up books, and drawings. Two of Garaicoa’s gelatin silver prints with thread and pins, titled Untitled (Pier) and Velero (Ship), are in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. In this conversation, held on September 18, 2016, Garaicoa discusses his career, latest projects, and inaugural Artist x Artist residency with Michelle Bird and Andrea Nelson