Close Encounters with Hans Richter

The versatile and multiply talented Hans Richter–whose exhibition opens on Sunday (and to members today)–was equally at home as a painter, filmmaker, and writer, helping to bring about groundbreaking advances from Expressionism and Dadaism to Constructivism and Surrealism to experimental and avant-garde film. For Richter, whose Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 are among the first abstract films ever created, the future of art and film were one and the same.

Richter’s life and creativity brought him into contact with a virtual Who’s Who of early twentieth-century pioneers, many of whom we include in the exhibition: Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, El Lissitzky, Kazimir Malevich, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and many others. When driven out of Germany by the Nazi regime, Richter eventually made his way to New York, where he taught film at City College and became engaged with the émigré artists’ community as well as the pioneers of New American Cinema, including Jonas Mekas, Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, and Standish Lawder, among many others.

Hans Richter, Schlittenfahrt (Skating), c. 1915, Kunsthaus Zürich, © 2013 Hans Richter Estate, Photo: Kunsthaus Zürich

The social import and utopian outlook of Richter’s art is a legacy of his first encounters with the avant-garde through artists and intellectuals associated with the leading Berlin artistic circles of the 1910s where he experienced both Cubism and the Expressionist Blaue Reiter aesthetic. For Richter, the Cubists brought not only “a new sense of harmony . . . a quiet, more powerful music” but also “the courage, the audacity to dare this step. They jumped from the world of natural objects into the fragmentation of objects, so I jumped too.” Simultaneously he fell in with the pacifist and anarchist crowd around the periodical Die Aktion (The Action), whose contributors he described as an assortment of “expressionists . . . , socialists, Tolstoyists, cubists, poets, and politicians.” The strong sense of social conscience Richter gained from his engagement with these creative circles was intensified by his experience in World War I. Seriously injured within a month of his induction in September 1914, Richter was eventually discharged from active duty and in 1916 made his way to Zürich’s Café de la Terrasse to keep an appointment with two Expressionist poets he had made partially in jest two years earlier on the eve of his induction. Suddenly he found himself in the midst of the most radical artists’ group in Europe at the time, Zürich Dada, whose members included Hans Arp, Marcel Janco, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, and Tristan Tzara.

While taking part in the Dadaists’ exhibitions, Richter experienced abstraction in its purest form in the abstract embroideries by Adya van Rees and Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Taeuber-Arp’s abstract works influenced Richter’s paintings and films, but equally as important, in her search for “principles of order” she shared, along with Hans Arp’s “enchanted” language, a purpose for art similar to Richter’s pursuit in collaboration with Swedish artist Viking Eggeling of a “universal language” that could bring all of humanity together.

Richter and Eggeling began with abstract drawings and paintings based on musical analogs: Richter was inspired by a suggestion from Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni to try counterpoint, “movement and counter-movement. So then I used the paper like a musical instrument.” Richter began making scrolls, including Orchestration der Farben (Orchestration of Colors), 1923/1970, which convey an ambiguous space in which forms seem to move through time. The next step came with a joint decision by Richter and Eggeling that their sequential forms were best suited to the film medium, and Richter evolved a revolutionary idiom over the course of his films Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23, in which the very elements of cinema (the screen, the presence, and absence of light) allow the screen to represent nothing but itself, immersing the viewer in a single field where the work of art exists in a continuum between cinematic and architectural space, as seen in LACMA’s exhibition.

Hans Richter, Vormittagsspuk/Ghosts Before Breakfast, 1928, © Hans Richter Estate

On the occasion of the Baden-Baden Music Festival in 1928, Richter presented his film Vormittagsspuk (Ghosts before Breakfast) with music by Paul Hindemith. Over the next few years Richter was deeply involved in film and even acted as a film curator for the now famous 1929 FiFo (Film and Foto) exhibition in Stuttgart. This was one of the first exhibitions to bring film and photography together in an aesthetic called “New Vision.” Hans Richter: Encounters includes photographs by Karl Blossfeldt, Anton Bruehl, Imogen Cunningham, Florence Henri, André Kertész, Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Werner Rohde, Maurice Tabard, Umbo, and Edward Weston, a number of these from the Audrey and Sydney Irmas Collection and the Marjorie and Leonard Vernon Collection at LACMA. After a decade of making industrial and commissioned films in Holland and Switzerland, Richter managed to escape the increasingly desperate conditions for Jews in Europe and arrived in New York in 1941. Upon his arrival, Richter reflected on the events in Europe in monumental scrolls that treated epic moments from the war, combining painting and collage techniques.

Gesture was an equal starting point for his films and his paintings, as Richter made clear in a remarkable scrapbook of 1942. In this sequence of more than one hundred drawings (made available to the visitor digitally in the exhibition), Richter explains his working process for creating the painting Dragonfly (Counterpoint in Red, Black, Gray, and White), 1943.

Hans Richter, Dragonfly (Counterpoint in Red, Black, Gray, and White), 1943, private collection, © 2013 Hans Richter Estate, Photo © 2013 Museum Associates/LACMA

Throughout the exhibition we see how Richter transported forms or procedures between artistic media. He achieved spectacular results in his American films, and especially in Dreams that Money Can Buy (1944–47), an enchanting film made in collaboration with John Cage, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger, Darius Milhaud, and Man Ray (among others), shown in a special theater within the exhibition. Ever the Dadaist, Richter kept up with the new generation of neo-Dada, pop, neorealist, and Fluxus artists, making his own multiples and Dada-redux pieces and greeting the next generation with the hope “that art’s original magic will be brought to life again.”

Timothy O. Benson, Curator of the Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies at LACMA

Hans Richter: Encounters opens this Sunday. Member previews are open Thursday through Saturday.

On Sunday afternoon, LACMA is presenting a free screening of the new documentary Hans Richter: Everything Turns — Everything Revolves, followed by a Q&A with the film’s director, David Davidson.

Wu Wei: Independent Thinker (and Drinker) of the Ming Court

Wu Wei (1459–1509) is featured in Ming Masterpieces from the Shanghai Museum at LACMA by the hanging scroll titled Playing the Zither in a Pine Valley.  Like virtually all of Wu Wei’s paintings, it is undated, but is a fine example of the style of Wu Wei, as the painting combines landscape and portraiture—two areas of painting in which he excelled.

Wu Wei, Playing the Zither in a Pine Valley, fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, Shanghai Museum

Wu Wei was a professional painter who worked both in and out of the Imperial Court. In fact, he worked at the Imperial Court several times for several Emperors of the Ming Dynasty, having at times withdrawn voluntarily and at times being handed the pink slip by bureaucrats who disliked Wu because of his disdain for “important people.” This may have been due to his background, having come from a literati family that fell on hard times during his childhood. This caused his training to abruptly stop. However, he was a lucky man who attracted the patronage of a wealthy duke in Nanjing that launched his career as a professional painter.

Wu also had a difficult time adapting to the highly regimented life of the Court. He was a heavy drinker and often showed its effects in rude and unseemly behavior.  In fact, it is thought that his drinking led to his fairly early death, just as he was about to embark on yet another summons by the Court. However, when he was at his best as a painter, he was very good indeed. The Emperor Xiaozong (the Hongzhi Emperor) gave Wu a seal that read “First Among Painters” (hua zhuangyuan). Now that’s a Good Housekeeping seal of approval!

Wu painted both landscapes and figures. Some of his figure paintings depict a meticulousness and exactitude that show off his fine technique. In others, he painted with a “wild brush,” using sweeping and zigzagging strokes in varying pressures to create a highly dynamic quality. In landscapes, he generally favors the dramatic, employing bold brushwork to reflect mountainsides and flora.

Wu Wei, Playing the Zither in a Pine Valley (detail), fifteenth to early sixteenth centuries, Shanghai Museum

The Wu Wei in LACMA’s exhibition is a good example of much of his painting style. The landscape around the figure is full of aggressive brushwork that does not depict the rockery and trees as much as it evokes their craggy, gnarled, and wild attributes. On the other hand, the figures are really a blend of his meticulous and delicate style in the rendering of the features and a hint of his more aggressive style in the drapery of the garments. These painting styles were to have a profound influence on many other painters in the early and mid-Ming period (the so-calling Jiangxia school), and equally but later led to criticism by luminaries like Dong Qichang in the late Ming, who criticized his paintings for their lack of delicacy and restraint. Thus the very practices that made Wu Wei famous in his own day were the reasons why the late Ming scholars (and virtually all that followed them up to the twentieth century) castigated his paintings.  Only in the last few decades has our bias in favor of literati styles of Chinese painting made room for Wu Wei, other professionals, and Court painters of the early Ming in the pantheon of respected Chinese painters.

Franklin Tom, East Asian Art Council member

A Collaborative Venture: The Conservation of Morlete’s Ports of France

In 2007 we acquired a remarkable group of six paintings by the Mexican painter Juan Patricio Morlete Ruiz (1713–1781). This group of works, on view now in our Latin American galleries, is based on engravings after Les Ports de France, an original series of fifteen paintings completed between 1753 and 1765 by the eighteenth-century French artist Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789). Commissioned for Louis XV of France (r. 1723–74) by Abel-François Poisson, marquis de Marigny and brother of Madame de Pompadour, Vernet’s series enjoyed immediate success and was widely disseminated through prints.

Over the past two years the museum’s departments of Latin American Art and Paintings Conservation closely collaborated in studying and restoring Morlete’s paintings. The result is quite mesmerizing. When we acquired the works they were covered with a yellow varnish layer that obscured the contrast and tonality of the original colors and flattened the perspective. Once removed, the illusion of space and depth returned, revealing the work of a thoughtful and highly skilled artist. Careful technical examination also yielded much information about the artist’s technique and use of pigments. This video, narrated by actor Julian Sands, documents the fascinating process of conserving Morlete’s pictures.

Ilona Katzew, curator and department head, Latin American Art

Joseph Fronek, senior conservator and head, Paintings Conservation

Stephen Prina Stumbles Across Inspiration on La Brea Avenue

In the video below, artist Stephen Prina talks about stumbling across a bright pink furniture unit by architect A.M. Schindler in a shop window in Los Angeles, a memory that serves as the jumping-off point for Prina’s new installation Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It, on view through August 4th.

Henri Matisse: La Gerbe

Now on view at LACMA is Henri Matisse: La Gerbe, a new exhibition that examines in depth the artist’s final commission, in 1953. The artwork has been permanently on view at LACMA since 2010, but the new exhibition provides context by showing Matisse’s early maquette (on loan from the Hammer Museum) and other works created around the same time, including Madame de Pompadour (1951) and a complete set of his Jazz portfolio (1947). At the time of La Gerbe‘s installation at LACMA in 2010, senior curator and department head of modern art, Stephanie Barron, told the story of how the artwork came to LACMA. In honor of the new exhibition, we re-print that blog post below.

–

Today [September 23, 2010] is the long-awaited final installation of Henri Matisse’s large-scale ceramic La Gerbe (The Sheaf) (1953), commissioned by Los Angeles patrons Sidney and Frances Brody from the artist in the early 1950s.  The Brodys’ extraordinary collection of modern art, including works by Picasso, Braque, Giacometti, Calder, and Moore, graced their elegant home designed by A. Quincy Jones in the early 1950s.  Intended to occupy a prime position in their new home, the Matisse ceramic became, as Frances Brody would describe it, “the heart of our home.”

La Gerbe installed in Brody residence. Photo courtesy the archives of Frances L. Brody, now at LACMA.

The journey to today has been a long one.  I remember discussing the possibility of this gift to LACMA in 1986 when she indicated that she would be willing to promise it to the museum in honor of our 25th anniversary.  At the time she shared with me the fascinating story of the commission, showed me correspondence about the acquisition, and regaled me with amazing details about meeting Matisse.

In 1952 the Brodys approached Matisse, who at the time was creating colorful paper cut-outs, with the idea of the commission. Matisse expressed interest and worked on several proposals even before knowing the exact size of the wall.  He showed the Brodys a full-scale paper cut-out when they visited him in Cimiez (Nice, France) in May of 1952. They rejected this first design (that cut-out is today in the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; a ceramic version, Apollo, is in the Toledo Museum of Art),  but accepted a subsequent proposal.

Henri Matisse, Apollo, 1953, ceramic tile and plaster, courtesy of the Toledo Museum of Art, gift of Edward Drummond Libbey

The Brodys also acquired the full-scale maquette of La Gerbe, which they subsequently donated to UCLA.  The final ceramic, created in fifteen sections, was shipped to L.A. shortly after the artist died in November 1954.

Sadly, in November 2009, Frances passed away at age 93.  As promised, she left the Matisse to LACMA in her will.  She was a remarkable figure in Los Angeles’ history, whose grace, style, erudition, and opinions were truly legendary.

Frances L. Brody

In January we began the adventure of deinstalling this 2,000-pound ceramic wall, which had remained in its original position for more than half a century.  It was, to say the least, a delicate and difficult procedure.  Thanks to the ingenuity of our team, we were able to literally detach the mural from the wall in one piece (it was bolted to the wall) and crane it out over the house and trees to an awaiting flatbed truck.  Watching the Matisse hovering in the air high above the trees was one of the most heart-stopping moments I have ever had as a curator.

La Gerbe in process of being deinstalled from Brody residence

La Gerbe in process of being deinstalled from Brody residence

Safely ensconced in a secure a-frame, the ceramic eventually made its way to the museum. After close examination by our conservation department, the decision was made to do a light surface cleaning and prepare the ceramic for permanent installation in the museum.  A prominent wall in the lobby of the Ahmanson Building was selected as the appropriate permanent location for this monumental Matisse.  The ceramic was carefully rigged, gently positioned on the wall, and attached to a steel structure; a wall was then built around the work.

La Gerbe during installation at LACMA

Frances Brody, cognizant of the commission’s significance, wrote a fascinating account of the commission, which I think best describes the transaction.

La Gerbe installed at LACMA

Stephanie Barron, Senior Curator and Department Head, Modern Art