Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Happy Birthday to Henry Moore, born on this day in 1898! 

During the 1950s he devised many compositions of seated figures, usually in pairs or groups, which allude to the renewal of life in postwar Britain. The couple depicted in "King and Queen," however, has greater public significance. The subject emerged as Moore worked on figures inspired by an Egyptian Seated Royal Couple from the eighteenth century B.C., a sculpture displayed in the British Museum. The serenity and stateliness of Moore’s figures, completed in the same year as the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, may also reaffirm Britain’s monarchy as a symbol of continuity and triumph after the country’s near destruction by war. 

Explore more: http://s.si.edu/2v4Jk1W

Don’t miss “Our View From Here” by Linn Meyers, on view through August 13! 

“All in all, the creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualification and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. This becomes even more obvious when posterity gives a final verdict and sometimes rehabilitates forgotten artists.” 

Happy Birthday to Marcel Duchamp, born on this day in 1887! 

Portrait by Bert Stern, 1967. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

We're celebrating with Yayoi Kusama's "Infinity Mirrored Room—Love Forever"! Hexagonal in shape and mirrored on all sides, Love Forever features two peepholes that invite visitors to peer in and see both themselves and another participant repeated into infinity. For the artist, the concept of “Love Forever” stood for civil rights, sexual liberation, the antiwar movement, and the activist groups of the 1960s.

Explore more: http://kusama.si.edu/

Photo: Courtesy of Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore

“Light reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world through colors,” ~ Alma Thomas

"Skylight" 1973 http://s.si.edu/2d41TbS

Happy Black History Month!

See the work of Horace Pippin on view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection. 

Serving in an African American regiment during World War I in France, self-taught artist Horace Pippin received a wound that partially paralyzed his right arm. Thereafter, Pippin used painting  as a physical therapy, and in 1931 was able to complete his first oil painting. Although his earliest works are somber depictions of his wartime experiences, his later scenes are hopeful and imbued with religious faith. "Holy Mountain III" (1945) is based on the biblical passage Isaiah 11:6-9, a prophecy that describes a peaceful world in which predatory animals live in harmony with their prey. A dense forest is suggested behind the flowered field, in which small, shadowy figures threaten to disturb the utopia.

Happy 88th Birthday, Claes Oldenburg!

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Oldenburg is known for his soft sculptures, performance pieces, and installations, as well as for the many architectural-scale public works he made with his late wife and partner Coosje van Bruggen. His works transform the scale, function, and shape of familiar objects, allowing viewers to see the ordinary in unexpected ways.

On view in our sculpture garden "Geometric Mouse: Variation I, Scale A" 1971 http://s.si.edu/2jpX11p

"Carving is interrelated masses conveying an emotion; a perfect relationship between the mind and the color, light and weight which is the stone, made by the hand which feels."

Happy Birthday to sculptor Barbara Hepworth, born on this day in 1903!

Hepworth took inspiration from organic forms and her compositions mimic the rhythm and flow of water-smoothed rocks, caves, and ancient hills. "Figure for Landscape" (1960) is on view in our sculpture garden, have you seen it at different times of day? Sunlight creates varied effects, and the openings allow for the surrounding landscape to become part of the artwork.  

Happy Birthday to Joseph Cornell, born on this day in 1903!

Cornell used the Surrealist practice of bringing together unrelated found objects, his unique spin involved creating intricate shadow boxes. He was fascinated with eras and worlds different from his own, he created a whole series around Renaissance art  including "Medici Princess" (1948-52). 

Explore more of his work in our collection: http://s.si.edu/2hBqiGD

"There are no rules, that is one thing I say about every medium, every picture ... that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about."

Happy Birthday to Helen Frankenthaler, born on this day in 1928!

To create “Painted on 21st Street,” (1950-51), Frankenthaler used oil paint, sand, plaster of Paris, and coffee grounds. This is one of her early works, which reflects her looking at Abstract Expressionist painters such as Jackson Pollock, who often included non-art materials – cigarette butts or enamel house paints, for example, in Pollock’s case – in their work. It is not typical of the artist’s most recognized technique of pouring paint on unprimed canvas, which led to her being associated with Color Field artists. See this piece on view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection.

Remembering Morris Louis, born on this day in 1912!  

Louis was a central figure of the Washington Color School, a group of abstract painters that emerged in Washington, DC, in the late 1950s. Inspired by the techniques of Helen Frankenthaler, who used thinned pigments to “stain” her paintings, Louis devised a process of pouring diluted paint over the surfaces of unprimed and unstretched canvases. "Point of Tranquility," from Louis’s Floral series, features flows of paint spreading outward from a dense center. The intense, sensual colors suggest dynamic processes of movement and growth.

“Having been torn from my homeland during my adolescence, I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast out from the womb. . . . My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the Universe. It is a return to the maternal source.” 

Remembering Ana Mendieta, born on this day in 1948. Mendieta’s performative “earth-body” works probed the primeval link between woman and nature. Born in Cuba, Mendieta was separated from her family as a child, growing up in foster care in the United States. In the deeply personal, transformative actions documented in her video works, Mendieta’s body becomes a nexus of performance, conceptual art, and spiritual transcendence.  

See her work on view in Masterworks from the Hirshhorn Collection: "Corazón de Roca con Sangre (Rock Heart with Blood)" (1975)

“We are a landscape of all we have seen.”

Remembering Isamu Noguchi, born on this day in 1904. "Lunar Landscape"(1943-44) is drawn from the imagination of the artist after several months in a Japanese-American internment camp, isolated in the desert during WWII. Noguchi had a lifelong preference for stone as a medium (he had worked with Constantin Brancusi in Paris in the late 1920s), but he also worked with clay and paper and was well known as a designer of landscapes, stage sets, and furniture. This sculpture is a rare surviving example of the "Lunar" series, in which Noguchi used a new material, magnesite, to create abstract biomorphic forms.

On Election Day, we're thinking of Nam June Paik's rendition of the American flag!   

 A flag is instantly recognizable on this 7-by-12-foot bank of 70 monitors, in which stars and stripes share air time with split-second news stills, rotating statues of Liberty, endless runs of ones and zeros (the binary language of computers), and a face that morphs through every U.S. president from Harry S. Truman to Bill Clinton. 

Paik was an important pioneer in the development of video installation art. Trained in music theory, piano, and electronic music, Paik began his career as a performance artist and avant-garde musician. In the early 1960s he made his first "altered TVs" in which he manipulated television signals with magnets and used video feedback, synthesizers, and other technology to produce kaleidoscopic shapes and luminous colors.

Photo: Still of "Video Flag" (1985-1996)

Happy Halloween! Celebrate with Ragnar Kjartansson's "Death and the Children," currently on view!   

Dressed as a personification of death, wearing a black frock coat and brandishing a scythe made from paper and a wooden pole, Kjartansson encounters a group of schoolchildren visiting a cemetery in Reykjavík. While wandering among the tombstones with the children attentively following and asking questions, he engages them in a candid conversation, at once playful and grave, about the afterlife and mortality. 

Video still, 2002: Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York  

Happy Birthday to Walt Kuhn, born on this day in 1877! 

A versatile artist and theater designer, Kuhn played a significant role in the development of twentieth-century American art. "The Tragic Comedians" (1916) reveals his early mastery of modern figure composition and his fascination with the theme of the circus.