[Exhibitions of the Museum Gugging 2009 and 2010]
2010
Current:
10/7 2010 - 3/20 2011
"judith & shields.! - judith scott meets tribal art",
"sava.! sekulic" and
"gugging classics 4.!"
Judith SCOTT (1943 Cincinnati, Ohio – 2005 Oakland, California), whose work will be on show in a solo exhibition for the first time in Austria, is an internationally acclaimed object artist, who practiced her talent in the use of yarns, waste fabrics and every day objects after a diagnosis of Down-Syndrome and deafness had left her isolated for 35 years. She intertwined her materials into grandiose organic sculptures. In 1987, urged on by her close twin sister Joyce Wallace SCOTT, she first visited the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California. That institution offers studio spaces to people with special physical or mental needs and in addition boasts a fruitful, professionally operating gallery.
Having met the artist Sylvia SEVENTY, Judith Scott developed her own style, which was completely autonomous and highly expressive. A representative of Outsider Art, she went on to gain international recognition, her works forming part of many important collections. Judith Scott used wool, yarn and thread – often seen as `female´ materials – and wound them, knotted them, tied them around everyday objects, covered them up. The objects disappeared underneath a thick layer of colorful bunches. Thus, she created objects of a nature that had never been seen in art history before. A representative of Outsider Art, she has gained international recognition and is represented in many important collections. The works on show are on loan from the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, California, as well as from private collections.
Judith Scott – the Artist
Three-dimensional artworks are very rare in Art Brut, and women are a minority among the artists. Judith Scott not only forms part of that minority, she also represents a definite highlight in international Art Brut. She was a woman with a difficult personal fate, who unexpectedly emerged from her isolation after many years of introversion and created innovative and unique artworks out of conventional materials and objects. She is one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, not only in Art Brut, but also in the context of contemporary art.
"shields.!" New Guinea is a country where Stone Age-old cultures had survived until only a few decades ago. Those cultures not only led to the formation of over 800 languages on one island, they also breathed creative life into objects used in daily and cultural events. The lack of technology – no iron was available – meant that all cultural accomplishments had to be achieved with the materials and possibilities nature itself had to offer.
Real and ritual wars, fought exclusively by men, made shields a requirement. They not only helped deflect arrows and spears, but also acted as symbols of affiliation to an ancestral culture that drew its strength from the ancestors’ power. The shields were meant to intimidate the opponent; at the same time they became creative experimental fields for their highly specialised creators. A wooden sheet sculpted from air roots of trees is turned into the artist’s canvas. Here he creates his abstract images using natural pigments. Far into the twentieth century, the valleys of the New Guinea highlands have thus been a cradle of unique artworks from a Western point of view. The works on show – among them rare exhibits from the so-called “pre-contact era”, the time before any contact with Western civilisations - come from Australian and European exhibitions.
The Highlands of New Guinea – an historical and cultural overview
Contrary to the coastal regions of Papua New Guinea, which were colonized by the British and German empires, vast areas of the highland with a population of over a million people remained undiscovered until the mid 30s of the 20th century. The inhabitants of the highlands are called “Papua”. Their ancestors were hunters and gatherers who established themselves in the fertile valleys as early as 30.000 years ago. The “Austronesians” on the other hand, ancestors themselves of the Polynesians, settled in the coastal areas only 5.000 years ago. In the highland comprising around 500.000 acres the inhabitants speak a variety of different, yet related languages. All of them belong to the Trans New Guinea languages, indicating a common root. The central regions of the Papua New Guinea highlands, east and west of the great Wahgi valley, allowed for trade routes, communication and exchange of ideas – those regions have always been the most densely populated. On the other side of the border the Baliem valley of Western Papua sustained a very large population. The trade in shells, feathers, oil, salt and stone tools flourished along those valleys over long distances. But those movements were undertaken only in groups: single persons never travelled far beyond the borders, the distrust of strangers being an important factor in highland life. Thus, cultural differences developed parallel to the many languages.
Johann Feilacher on “judith & shields.!”
This exhibition presents works side by side that could not be more different from each other: `feminine´ wool in the hands of a woman who created contemporary art without ever having taken an interest in the art of her time, much less having been part of its world during her lifetime; and `masculine´ objects, hailing from a culture that’s removed from today by millennia and primarily serving a military and ritual purpose.
Both of them have one thing in common: their originality – their production was uninfluenced by the norms and tendencies of the twentieth century, yet the receptive development of Western culture was necessary to appreciate them as art. A seeming paradox, which meets the onlooker’s wish for the Unknown, the New and the Foreign.
Johann FEILACHER is the curator of the exhibition and artistic director of the Museum Gugging.
Catalogue
“judith & shields.!” Published by Johann Feilacher. Monograph “judith.! scott” together with the catalogue “shields! art from new guinea” in one volume. 88 pages each. Residenzverlag publishing company.
The catalogue will be issued together with the opening of the exhibition.
The exhibition “judith & shields.! judith scott meets tribal art” is a cooperation of the Gallerie Gugging and the Museum Gugging. We would like to thank the following sponsors for making this exhibition possible:
Novomatic, Porr, Kabelsignal, Raiffeisen and Telekom.
“sava.! sekulic” at the Novomatic Salon
Sava SECULIC was born in 1902 in Bilišani near Obrovac, on the Dalmatian coast. His father, whom he lost when he was 10, taught him to read and write; he never attended any school. After his father’s death he was left with his mother and three younger sisters, which left deep traces in his consciousness. Five decades later he created a series of compositions, featuring maternity and family as the main theme. A soldier during World War I, he was wounded on the Italian front and consequently lost one eye. After the war he travelled through Yugoslavia as a casual worker. In 1943 Sekulic settled in Belgrade where he found work as a bricklayer. According to his own testimony, Sekulic began to write poems on the eve of World War II and illustrated them himself. Many of his poems are elaborated with verses he wrote on the reverse; they help today’s onlooker understand his works and identify themes and contexts. After retiring in 1962, Sava Sekulic devoted himself entirely to his artistic creativity – painting and writing poems. The Museum Gugging is dedicating the presentation at the Novomatic Salon to that extraordinary artist who died in Belgrade in 1989.
- Sava Sekulic
"His own fome seen from his
parents house"
1968, MNA Jagodina, Serbia
- Sava Sekulic
"If we think we get everything"
1977, MNA Jagodina, Serbia
Sava Sekulic’s `Marginal´ Art
Sekulic first presented his works in an exhibition in 1964 and was granted his first solo exhibition in 1969. In the context of Naïve Painting, a field that is highly present in the former Yugoslavia of the second half of the 20th century, he counts among the `marginal artists´. The latter created new forms of `beauty´ - on their own and often on the margins of Yugoslavian society at the time. Sekulic’s picture language demarks an overflowing imagination and an enormous capability to intuitively and instinctively realise his visual ideas. His pictures are influenced by popular beliefs and characterized by their unmistakable harmonic implementation. Shapes sway into each other and creatures, half animal, half human, materialize in mutual penetration. Clear colours appear next to mystical motifs and mythological figures in partly naïve objectivity, filling the entire image space.
Sekulic’s Universe
“He is the painter of the universe, of timelessness and the unlimited” is how Nina KRSTIC characterizes Sava Sekulic. She is the director of the Museum of Naïve Art in Jagodina, Serbia, where the biggest collection of the artist’s works is held. His work is drawn from innumerable legends and myths of pagan or Christian origin, historical or contemporary events, in which he distils the individual into his personal universal logic. The narrative fades into the background, the pictorial being the focus of his paintings. Sekulic’s figures strike the onlooker as highly simplified, flat and stylized; uninfluenced by the laws of proportion and perspective they appear almost abstract in their deformation.
Nina Krstic on the significance of Sava Sekulic’s art: “Due to his self-teaching, choice of theme subjects, the genuineness of his experience and the mythological origin, the works of Sava Sekulic belong to naïve art, neo-surrealistic poetics. The artist's realization of form, material, painting procedure, as well as the paintings as final products themselves point to some characteristics of Art Brut. The surface of his paintings is rough. He used many different techniques in one painting while he automatically chose his materials: cardboard, paper, nylon, ordinary canvas, sacking. He made his last sketches in ordinary white chalk. He never thought of his paintings as objects for an exhibition. To him, his paintings were a means to express the essence of his being. His paintings are signed “SSS” - Sava Sekulic, the Self-taught, as he, himself, determined his own place in art.” (Excerpt from the catalogue accompanying the exhibition sava.! sekulic. Published by Johann Feilacher (editor) with texts by Nina Krstic. Residenz-Verlag publishing company)
The pictures on show in the exhibition are on loan from the collection of the Museum of Naïve Art in Jagodina, Serbia.
Catalogue:
"sava.! sekulic." Published by Johann Feilacher with texts by Nina Krstic. Residenz-Verlag publishing company.
"gugging classics 4.!"
The presentation gugging classics 4.! can be seen simultaneous with the opening of the temporary exhibitions "judith & shields.!" and "sava.! sekulic".
This show extends over 840 sq. yd. and offers a comprehensive overview of past and present artistic activities in Gugging. Next to well-known Art-Brut-representatives such as August WALLA, Oswald TSCHIRTNER or Johann HAUSER works of rarely shown artists like Franz GABLECK or Rudolph HORACEK are also on show. Since the 70s the Gugging Artists have been important representatives of Art Brut worldwide. Jean DUBUFFET personally recognized them as representatives of that genre. In addition to the Collection de l‘Art Brut in Lausanne their works are collected and presented in many museums of contemporary art such as the Philadelphia Art Museum or the Setagaya Museum in Tokyo. Since 2006 the Museum Gugging has organised the exhibition of those works at the place of their origin.
- Franz Gableck
Motor-racing Circuit, 1968
- August Walla,
[painted backside of a canvas], 1991
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3/26 2010 - 9/26 2010:
"aloïse.! corbaz",
"hauser's frauen.!" and the permanent collection
"gugging classics 3.!"
» more
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2009
9/17 2009, Re-opening of the Museum Gugging
"liberty.! - african american artists" and
"gugging classics"
9/18 2009 - 3/14 2010
» more