A
major new exhibition tracing a century of Abstract art from 1915 to
today is on show at the Whitechapel Gallery from 15 January 2015. The
exhibition takes a fresh look at this new art for a modern age, and
asks how art relates to society and politics.
Curated
by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director, and Magnus af Petersens, Curator at
Large, Whitechapel Gallery, Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract
Art and Society 1915 – 2015,(15 January – 6 April 2015), is
international in its scope. As well as following the rise of
Constructivist art from its revolutionary beginnings amongst the
avant-garde in Russia and Europe, the exhibition sheds new light on
the evolution of geometric abstraction from continents across the
globe including Asia, the US and Latin America.
The
exhibition begins with one of Kazimir Malevich’s radical ‘black
square’ paintings. Alongside Malevich’s Black and White.
Suprematist Composition (1915), included in the famous exhibition The
Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: 0.10 (1915) in Petrograd, now
St Petersburg, prior to the Russian Revolution of 1917, these iconic
works are the starting point for telling the story of Abstract art
and its political potential over the next century.
Arranged
chronologically, the exhibition is divided into four key themes:
‘Communication’
examines the possibilities of abstraction for mobilizing radical
change.
‘Architectonics’
looks at how abstraction can underpin socially transformative spaces.
‘Utopia’imagines
a new, ideal society, which transcends hierarchy and class.
‘The
Everyday’ follows the way abstract art filters into all aspects of
visual culture, from corporate logos to textile design.
The
exhibition includes paintings, sculptures, film and photographs
spanning the century from 1915 to the present, brought together from
major international collections including Moderna Museet, Stockholm;
Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona; Art Institute of Chicago,
Chicago; The Costakis Collection, Thessaloniki; National Galleries of
Scotland, Edinburgh; Tate, London; and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.
Further
exhibition highlights include an entire wall filled with photographs
documenting the radio towers of Moscow and Berlin by Aleksandr
Rodchenko and László Moholy-Nagy amongst others, blow-up archive
photographs of iconic exhibitions running through the history of
abstraction and a selection of magazines which convey revolutionary
ideas in art and society through typography and graphic design.
Events
Programme
A
programme of talks and performances expand on the themes of the
exhibition, from an introduction to geometric abstract art by
Whitechapel Gallery director and exhibition co-curator Iwona Blazwick
(27 Feb, 3pm) to a major two-day symposium on abstraction and society
bringing together experts in the field including Doug Ashford, Tanya
Barson and Briony Fer (Fri 13 & Sat 14 Mar, 11.30am–6pm). Other
highlights include a London re-staging of Daniel Buren’s iconic New
York performance piece Seven Ballets in Manhattan (1975) (From Fri 30
Jan, 3pm and throughout Feb and Mar) and a work by Russian artist
Anna Parkina (Sat 12 Mar, 7pm)merging live music, light and movement
in an immersive abstract performance.
- The
first examples of Abstract art emerged at the beginning of the
20th century. Both a historical idea to come out of the Modernist
movement and an evolving artistic practice, abstraction was an
international phenomenon that gathered speed rapidly from late 1911
when a series of artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Robert
Delaunay and František Kupka broke away from tradition and
presented works of art with no discernible subject matter, instead
using colour, shape and texture to create new images. Other early
pioneers of Abstract art include Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee and
Hans Arp. The movement evolved over the 20th century and into the
21st century, affected by social movements, historical events and a
rapidly changing modern culture of connectivity.
- Key
moments in the history of Abstract art include the seminal
exhibition The Last Futurist Exhibition of Paintings: 0.10 in
St. Petersburg in 1915, which saw Kazimir Malevich present a
series of paintings that depicted blocks of colour floating against a
white background, the first example of geometrical abstraction. In
the aftermath of the Revolution of 1917, artists Lyubov Popova and
Aleksander Rodchenko emerged as central exponents of Russian
Constructivism, inspired by the pre-Revolutionary work of Malevich
and Tatlin. While in Europe in the 1920s and 30s, Piet Mondrian
and Theo Van Doesburg founded De Stijl, an artistic movement which in
turn influenced the Bauhaus style. While abstraction has
generated other more expressionist movements, for example post war
Abstract expressionism in the 1940s and 50s, these strands are not
examined in this exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery. In Brazil in
the late 1950s and 60s Neo-Concretist artists such as Lygia Clark and
Hélio Oiticica developed a new social and participatory way of
working. Today, contemporary artists still experiment and challenge
ideas of representation and reality, influenced by society and the
evolving world around them. Examples of this can be seen in work by
artists such as Sarah Morris and Armando Andrade Tudela who
demonstrate the influence of Abstract art on contemporary design
and brands.
Dóra Maurer Seven Rotations 1 – 6, 1979, collection of Zsolt Somlói and Katalin Spengler © Dóra Maurer
-
Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 –
2015, 15 January – 6 April 2015 is curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE,
Director, and Magnus af Petersens, Curator at Large, with Sophie
McKinlay, Acting Head of Exhibitions and Candy Stobbs, Assistant
Curator, Whitechapel Gallery. The Curatorial Advisory Committee for
the exhibition includes: Tanya Barson, Curator, Tate; Briony Fer,
Professor of Art History, University College London; Tom McDonough,
Professor in Art History, Binghampton University, New York; and Jiang
Jiehong, Professor of Chinese Art, Birmingham City University.
-
Adventures of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 –
2015 is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue with essays by
the Curatorial Advisory Committee alongside Iwona Blazwick and Magnus
af Petersens.
Alexander Abaza, Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Francis Alÿs, Armando Andrade Tudela, Carl Andre, Nazgol Ansarinia, Rasheed Araeen, Doug Ashford, Chant Avedissian, Dmitri Baltermants, Lewis Baltz, Geraldo de Barros, David Batchelor, Max Bill, Kamal Boullata, KP Brehmer, Daniel Buren, Andrea Büttner, André Cadere, Ilya Chashnik, Iakov Chernikov, Saloua Raouda Choucair, Lygia Clark, Horacio Coppola, Waldemar Cordeiro, Keith Coventry, Angela de la Cruz, Thea Djordjadze, Theo van Doesburg, Adrian Esparza, Emmanuil Evzerekhin, Thomaz Farkas, Dan Flavin, Andrea Fraser, Gaspar Gasparian, Isa Genzken, Liam Gillick, Zvi Goldstein, Peter Halley, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Clay Ketter, Gunilla Klingberg, Ivan Kliun, Gustav Klutsis, Katarzyna Kobro, Běla Kolářová, Judith Lauand, Fernand Léger, Klara Lidén, El Lissitzky, Liu Wei, Josiah McElheny, Tomás Maldonado, Kazimir Malevich, Werner Mantz, Dóra Maurer, Cildo Meireles, Nasreen Mohamedi, László Moholy-Nagy, Andrei Monastyrski and Collective Actions, Piet Mondrian, Sarah Morris, Hélio Oiticica, Gabriel Orozco, Blinky Palermo, Karthik Pandian, Lygia Pape, Anna Parkina, Adam Pendleton, Amalia Pica, Lyubov Popova, Dmitri Prigov, R. H. Quaytman, Tobias Rehberger, Lis Rhodes, Àngels Ribé, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Karl Peter Röhl, Willem de Rooij, Francesco Lo Savio, Oskar Schlemmer, Ivan Serpa, Arkady Shaikhet, Hassan Sharif, Melanie Smith, Antonina Sofronova, Hannah Starkey, Jeffrey Steele, Władysław Strzemiński, Nikolai Suetin, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Vladimir Tatlin, Rosemarie Trockel, Sergei Vasin, Kostis Velonis, Zhao Yao, Andrea Zittel, Heimo Zobernig, Facundo de Zuviría.
Adventures
of the Black Square: Abstract Art and Society 1915 – 2015
15
January – 6 April 2015
