Existing comment:
Beyond Borders
In the years just prior to World War I, American artists became increasingly aware of European avant-garde movements, including Cubism, Fauvism, Dada, and Surrealism. They visited exhibitions at home and abroad -- such as the International Exhibition of Modern Art of 1913, better known as the Armory Show -- and studied reproductions and criticism in the press. Their exposure to the work of artists like Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, and Henri Matisse inverted established relationships between place and American art during the interwar years. This gradually erased any one geographic center of training or subject matter for American painters and sculptors.
The inherent hybridity of the 2011 sculpture Girl on Globe II by British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare explores cultural identity in a global world; this is emphasized by its installation in the eighteenth-century Salon Dore in the next gallery. Shonibare's work exemplifies the permeable borders that characterize contemporary art where there is, effectively, no longer one definitive place, nationality, or center of the art world for artists to study, depict, and embrace.
You are invited to further reflect upon the theme of place as you continue your journey through the Corcoran's collection. Post-war American painters and sculpture, as well as photographs, are on view in the upstairs galleries. |