Creighton Michael, American, b. 1949
Tapestry Suite, 2012
Archival carbon black pigment inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Paper
18" x 18"
Gift of Creighton Michael, M.A. Art History, Vanderbilt University, 1976 in honor of Milan Mihal, Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus
2012.004

Tapestry Suite: Seven Digital Drawings by Creighton Michael

(July 9- October 6, 2013. Please note that the Gallery will be closed September 13-26, 2013.)
This summer, the Fine Arts Gallery will host a special exhibition of Tapestry Suite by Creighton Michael, M.A. 1976. These seven digital drawings, selected from Michael’s larger Tapestry series, were created by the artist in honor of Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus Milan Mihal, and donated to the Fine Arts Gallery by the artist. Michael writes that he would like to thank Professor Mihal, “for introducing me to the wondrous beauty and serene sensitivity of the Far East.” He also sites his experiences in Professor Mihal’s class as an influence for much of his artistic practice over the last forty years.

Michael has explained that the Tapestry series is a collection of composite drawings, layered in time and personal marking history, employing unconventional drafting tools, such as photographic negatives, video stills, sculpture, digital scans and intaglio solar plates. The artist selected the seven works featured in Tapestry Suite as a continuous narrative and a meditation on drawing. This is a common theme for Michael who, in much of his work, has expanded traditional notions of drawing by creating works of art that approach this time-honored practice in fresh, innovative ways.

Michael received his B.F.A. in painting from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (1971); his M.A. in Art History from Vanderbilt University (1976); and his M.F.A. in painting and multi-media from Washington University, St. Louis (1978). His work has been featured in numerous one-person exhibitions and can be found within the collections of The Brooklyn Museum; Denver Art Museum; Hafnarborg Institute of Culture and Fine Art, Hafnarfjördur, Iceland; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Mint Museums of Art, Charlotte, NC; among several others.

Hans Hinterreiter: A Theory of Form and Color

(July 9- September 12, 2013)
Drawn from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery’s collection of more than forty works by the Swiss color theorist Hans Hinterreiter (1902–1989), this exhibition will be the first solo exhibition in the United States of the artist’s paintings and prints since his 1988 retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Hinterreiter shared a rigorous approach to art making with the seminal Swiss architect, painter, and writer Max Bill, who stated in 1949 that “it is possible to develop an art to a large extent on the basis of mathematical thinking.” While the majority of the works selected for this exhibition were created by the artist in the 1960s and 1970s, five rare studies in gouache from the 1930s and 1940s, some with the artist’s annotated notes in the margins, will be included, along with monographs the artist has written on the subject of color and form theory.

Hans Hinterreiter: A Theory of Form and Color has been made possible, in part, by a generous donation from Leslie Cecil and Creighton Michael, M.A. '76.

Eugène Delacroix, French, 1798–1863
Méphistophélès dans les airs (Mephistopheles in the Air), from Faust, Tragédie de M. de Goethe, tr. en français par M. Albert Stapfer, 1828

Lithograph

10-3/4" x 9"

Vanderbilt Art Association Acquisition Fund Purchase
1983.004

Difficult Art and the Liberal Arts Imagination

(September 27–December 5, 2013. Please note that the gallery will be closed October 10–13, 2013, for fall break, and November 23–December 1, 2013, for Thanksgiving.)

Difficult Art and the Liberal Arts Imagination is presented to coincide with the fall 2013 Vanderbilt Commons Reading, College: What it Was, Is, and Should Be by Andrew Delbanco. In his book, which will be read by all incoming Vanderbilt first-year students, Delbanco defends the role of the liberal arts as a critical element of the undergraduate experience, stressing the importance of allowing students to test and discover their values and ideas among other activities and goals. One way to align the concept of difficult art with the Delbanco text is to suggest that it is in keeping with a liberal arts education that gallery visitors are exposed to “difficult” works. Through the liberal arts education, viewers are given ways of apprehending art in its various manifestations and are enabled to experience challenging works more fully.

Drawn from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery’s extensive permanent collection, Difficult Art and the Liberal Arts Imagination seeks to highlight works that confront the viewer with questions about the status of art, its meaning, and its purpose. Inspired by George Steiner’s essay, “On Difficulty,” which explores the various ways works of art in their impenetrable opaqueness resist comprehension and immediacy, the exhibition is a selection of works that are “difficult” in that they defy comprehension. Often, these works of art do not fit into ready-made categories and test or expand assumptions about what constitutes art. Some of the featured works refer or react to other works that may not be immediately obvious or known to the viewer, arising out of some “other” tradition. One example is John Chamberlain’s Maz. Made from the bodies of old cars, this work is a highlight of the university’s permanent collection and was recently part of Chamberlain’s retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, provoking the questions  “what is art?” and “why is this art?”

Artists represented in this exhibition whose works dislocate, confront, and goad our experience of their works include Salvador Dali, Eugène Delacroix, Donna Ferrato, Jean Hélion, Lee Krasner, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, Rembrandt van Rijn, Auguste Rodin, Edward Steichen, and Kara Walker. Vanderbilt faculty and staff selected several of the works in the show, and some are presented with commentary explaining why the work was chosen to represent “difficult” art.

Difficult Art and the Liberal Arts Imagination is organized by the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and curated by Martin Rapisarda, associate dean of the College of Arts and Science.