Untitled Document

<!DOCTYPE TEI.2 SYSTEM "../tei_files/teixlite.dtd">
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../tei_files/tltohtml_ncm.xsl"?>

<TEI.2>
<teiHeader>
<fileDesc>
<titleStmt>
<title>North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections [a machine-readable transcription]</title>
<author>Current, Karen</author>
<respStmt>
<resp>Creation of machine-readable version:</resp>
<name>Columbia Libraries Digital Program Division</name>
<resp>Conversion to TEI.2-conformant markup:</resp>
<name>Columbia Libraries Digital Program Division</name>
</respStmt>
</titleStmt>
<extent>ca. kb</extent>
<publicationStmt>
<publisher>Columbia University Libraries</publisher>
<pubPlace>New York</pubPlace>
<date>2004</date>
</publicationStmt>
<sourceDesc>
<biblFull>
<titleStmt>
<title level="m">North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections </title>
<respStmt>
<resp>Introduction</resp>
<name>Lawrence J. Wheeler</name>
<resp>Editor</resp>
<name>Rebecca Martin Nagy assisted by June Spence</name>
</respStmt>
</titleStmt>
<extent>[x], 277 p.</extent>
<publicationStmt>
<publisher>[North Carolina Museum of Art]</publisher>
<pubPlace>Raleigh, NC</pubPlace>
<date>c1998</date>
</publicationStmt>
</biblFull>
</sourceDesc>
</fileDesc>
</teiHeader>
<text>
<body>
<div1 type="notes">
North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections -- sample marked up pages, 12/24/03
Markup notes:
<note>
1: Basic image metadata elements at the top of each section have been manually marked up here as TEI <figure> and <figDesc> elements.
</note>
<note>
2: Figure elements display in red; only the <figure> and <idno> markup elements are shown in the HTML version for purposes of illustration. (To see full markup, save file to disk and view in text editor or xml app.)
</note>
<note>
3: Titles of works (of art or literature) are manually marked up as TEI in-line <title> elements; the HTML display is italic
</note>
<note>
4: NC Museum of Art accession numbers in the image description have been manually marked up as <idno type="accession">
</note>
</div1>
<div1 type="section">
<pb n="174"/>

<figure>
<figDesc>
<bibl>
<author>Francois Boucher and Studio<date>1703-1770</date>
</author>
<note type="culture"> French</note>
<title>Venus Rising from the Waves</title>
<date>about 1766</date>
<note type="material">Oil on canvas</note>
<note type="measurements">56 x 45 in. (142.2 x 114.3 cm)</note>
<note type="source">Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Sosthenes Behn, 1955</note>
<idno type="accession">55.8.2</idno>
</bibl>
</figDesc>
</figure>

At Versailles, King Louis XIV created a grand palace and expansive formal gardens as a magnificent setting for the royal court. To stimulate commerce and provide furnishings for his residences, Louis established factories such as the Gobelins, which became celebrated for its magnificent tapestries. In the following century, Louis’s great-grandson, Louis XV (page 170) appointed François Boucher director of the Gobelins and later First Painter to the King. The artist was much in favor for the decoration of rooms for the king and queen in the royal palaces at Versailles and Fontainebleau. Another influential patron of the artist was Madame de Porn-padour, official mistress of Louis XV, who exerted a significant influence on French culture in the eighteenth century.
Venus Rising from the Waves is a late work designed as a model for a Gobelins tapestry. It was removed from Gobelins in 1870 along with the paintingJupiterand Callisto, also in the collection of tile Museum, with which it formed a pair.
Venus’s association with the sea refers io tile Greek myth of her birth from sea foam. The dolphin and white doves are symbols of the goddess of love, as are the three Cupids and the objects they hold — pink roses, arrows for piercing hearts, and a torch for inflaming passions. Both Classical mythology and themes of love were particularly popular among aristocratic French patrons of Boucher’s time.
JPC
</div1>
<div1 type="section">
<pb n="248"/>

<figure>
<figDesc>
<bibl>
<author>William T. Williams<date>born 1942</date>
</author>
<note type="culture">American</note>
<title>Double Dare</title>
<date>1984</date>
<note type="material">Acrylic on canvas</note>
<note type="measurements">84 x 54 1/2 in. (213.3 x 138.4 cm)</note>
<note type="source">Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), 1991</note>
<idno type="accession">91.9</idno>
</bibl>
</figDesc>
</figure>

Following early experiments with geometric abstraction, William T. Williams rejected “those kind of refined, seemingly effortless surfaces,” which give “no indication of hand, no effort, no toil on the surface.” He was led to develop an approach to painting that was less calculated, more personal and open to sensation. From his travels through West Africa and study of its textile and painting traditions, he acquired a new vocabulary of pattern and form. At the same time, an awakening affinity with the Expressionist legacy of modern art altered his attitude toward his materials. Paint — not merely color, but the dense mercurial substance of paint — becomes a principal vehicle of communication.
One of Williams's most assertive paintings, <title level="m" rend="italics">Double Dare</title> is passionately wrought, built up of layers of paint poured onto the canvas and dripped down its length. Though Williams accepts chance and accident, there is nothing casual or spontaneous about his direction. <title level="m" rend="italics">Double Dare</title> is one of a series of paintings, each building on the experience of the preceding images. In this series, Williams fosters sensual interactions between himself and the material, and between the material and the viewer. Asked to explain the title, the artist cryptically replies, “<title level="m" rend="italics">Double Dare</title> refers to the distance I have traveled as an adult. The souvenirs of endless summers, childhood pranks dared and general mischief.” There is a playfulness in tile syncopated slaps of the hand — Williams's personal imprints that simultaneously hover above and sink into the encrusted surface. Literally and metaphorically, the artist endows his painting with a human touch.
VB
</div1>
<div1 type="section">
<pb n="249"/>

<figure>
<figDesc>
<bibl>
<author>Gerhard Richter <date>born 1932</date>
</author>
<note type="culture">German</note>
<title>Station (577-2)</title>
<date>1985</date>
<note type="material">Oil on canvas</note>
<note type="measurements">97 7/8 x 98 7/8 in. (251.2 x 251.2 cm)</note>
<note type="source">Purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest), the North Carolina Museum of Art Guild, and various donors, by exchange, 1996</note>
<idno type="accession">96.2</idno>
</bibl>
</figDesc>
</figure>

Defying convention, Gerhard Richter refuses to conform to one particular style of painting. Insisting that all styles are equally valid -- and invalid -- Richter moves freely between abstract and representational modes. However, his open-ended series of abstractions, marked by visceral seductive color and a decisive, almost reckless technique, constitutes his major achievement. These images are deliberately divorced from our experience of the world, and instead present an alternative reality of color and spatial relationships sensible only within the confines of the picture.
The artist's painting process is studiously unrehearsed. It depends upon a continuous, unpredictable, and changing dialogue with the image: "I always begin with the intention of obtaining a closed picture, with a properly composed motif," Richter observes. "Then, ... I proceed to destroy this intention piece by piece, against my own will almost, until the picture is finished -- that is until it has nothing left besides openness."

<title level="m" rend="italics">Station</title> is a masterpiece of controlled frenzy. The pictorial space, graded light to verdant shadow, is nebulous and unstable, cleaved violently by a magenta wedge. With the space, diverse and seemingly incompatible objects behave lawlessly. Paint in broad, thick swaths and coalesces in any form or object. Instead, it seems the visual traces of impulsive, even ecstatic motion. The whole lively history of abstract art is at play here. Richter's forceful, almost swaggering confidence, so evident in this painting, testifies to the continued vitality of abstration.
JWC
</div1>
<div1 type="section">
<pb n="250"/>

<figure>
<figDesc>
<bibl>
<author>Tom Phillips <date> born 1937</date>
</author>
<note type="culture">British</note>
<title>The Calligrapher Replies I</title>
<date>1987</date>
<note type="medium">Oil on canvas</note>
<note type="measurements">38 3/4 x 61 1/4 in. (98.4 x 155.5 cm)</note>
<note type="source">Purchased with funds various donors, by exchange, 1991</note>
<idno type="accession">91.19</idno>
</bibl>
</figDesc>
</figure>

Perhaps best known in this country for <title level="m" rend="italics">A Humument</title>, the Victorian novel whose pages he illuminated, Tom Phillips has created an oeuvre of oceanic diversity. His resume includes paintings, prints, sculpture, books (among which is his illustrated translation of Dante's <title level="m" rend="italics">Inferno</title>), and multimedia projects (including his video version of the <title level="m" rend="italics">Inferno</title> and his opera). An overriding interest in letter forms and language permeates his entire output.
Some of this London artist's earliest works prove that words can be pictures. Beginning in the 1960s, Phillips used packer's stencils to freight his canvases with a lettered — and multivalent — cargo. Years later, inspired by a trip to Japan, he switched to calligraphy. A rejoinder to the stenciled series, <title level="m" rend="italics">The Calligrapher Replies I</title> is painted out in longhand arabesques as elegantly entangled as the voices in Renaissance polyphony.
This work's complicated harmony and puzzling intricacy tender countless paths of line and color for the eye to explore. The painting is a tease. It invites and resists interplretation. Viewers can pick out a word here, a phrase there, but the artist has intentionally entrapped the content within the written maze. If the images are words, the theme is communication. Phillips's discerning wit exposes the way the modern babble obscures sense and significance. His work reasserts the power of the word — and the power of art — to deepen understanding.
HP
</div1>
</body>
</text>
</TEI.2>