The Art Collections Staff had an exciting week! Our team visited both the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Laguna Art Museum to see works by artists featured in the Escalette Collection of Art. On Monday, September 16th, we took a trip to Los Angeles to visit LACMA to explore “Mary Corse, A Survey in Light.” This amazing exhibition is Corse’s first solo museum survey, and displays works from her extensive portfolio. As a Minimalist artist, Corse is interested in limited color and the use of space and light. The exhibition follows her work from her early pieces with geometric canvases, to her “White Light” paintings. If you’re interested in seeing a Mary Corse painting a little closer to home, visit the study area on the 3rd floor of Beckman Hall.

 

While we were at LACMA, we also checked out  “The Allure of Matter: Material Art from China,” an exhibition that displayed work from Chinese contemporary artists. The pieces were created with a range of surprising materials including plastic, water, and wood, to hair, soda, and ash. It was amazing to witness the vast uses of different materials and the beautiful, extensive scale of the pieces.

 

Our last stop at LACMA was Mark Bradford’s composition, titled, 150 Portrait Tone. This piece is the size of a mural and is meant to convey a reaction to the reoccurring police brutality and the shootings of innocent black victims. It specifically references the fatal shooting of Philando Castile by a police officer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in July 2016. Castile was murdered after being pulled over in his car by a police officer. The killing was recorded and witnessed by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was in the passenger seat of the car. Bradford uses quotes from Reynolds that were recorded during the incident. The piece is a social commentary on police violence in the United States and puts a spotlight on the people of color that suffer from it. We are proud to have three works by Bradford in the Escalette Collection – they are all currently on display on the 4th Floor of Beckman Hall, the 2nd Floor of Moulton Hall, and the 2nd Floor of the Keck Center of Science and Engineering.

150 Portrait Tone, Mark Bradford

 

On Tuesday, we visited Laguna Art Museum to see their John Baldessari exhibition entitled “I will not make any more boring art” in reference to the first print he made (in 1971) with the same title.  Baldessari is one the world’s most recognized contemporary artists, and was born and raised in California. His iconic style distances the viewer from crucial information and disrupts common images with geometric fields of color. He edits and merges photography and media.This exhibition displays his daring, and often times comedic prints. We even found the same print (different edition) that we have in our collection, Accordionist (with Crowd), from the series titled, “A French Horn Player, A Square Blue Moon, and Other Subjects.” We are proud to have such an innovative artist in our collection.

 

John Baldessari, Accordionist (with Crowd), lithograph, 1994. 

 

Explore the Escalette Collection at wilkinsonartcollections.chapman.edu

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