2011 Annual Report - Nasher Museum of Art - Duke University

The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London andNew York, 1914-1918September 30, 2010 - January 2, 2011 | Brenda La Grange Johnson andHeather Johnson Sargent PavilionThe Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York,1914-1918, a partnership among the Nasher Museumand two international museums, featured rare worksfrom a short-lived but pivotal modernist art movementduring World War I. The exhibition reintroduced to thepublic the avant-garde movement Vorticism, a termcoined by American expatriate poet Ezra Pound todescribe an abstracted figurative style. It emergedin London among English and American artists as aresponse to French Cubism, Italian Futurism and thestaid English art scene. The Vorticists was the firstexhibition devoted to this Anglo-American movementto be presented in the United States since World War I.It included paintings, works on paper, photographs andsculpture. Artists included Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Wyndham Lewis,William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Dorothy Shakespear,Edward Wadsworth and others. The exhibition traveledto the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, and TateBritain in London.At the Nasher Museum, support for The Vorticists was providedby the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Marilyn M. Arthur, Trent andSusan Carmichael, the Graduate Liberal Studies program at DukeUniversity, Pepper and Donald Fluke, James and Laura Ladd,Olympia Stone and Sims Preston, and Nancy Palmer Wardropper,with assistance from the British Council.RELATED PROGRAMSTheatrical Performance, “Western Men,” with director Jay O’Berski and featuring Jeffrey Scott Detwiler, Victoria Facelli,Bart Matthews and Tony Perucci. Designed by Torry Bend. Supported by a grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of theProvost, Duke University.Supporting Member private gallery tour with Sarah Schroth, Nancy Hanks Senior Curator.Academic symposium, “Vorticism: New Perpectives,” with Mark Antliff (Duke University) and Scott W. Klein (Wake ForestUniversity) and presented by Duke and Wake Forest universities, with keynote addresses by Fredric Jameson (Duke University)and Paul Edwards (Bath Spa University).Musical Performance, “The Vorticists: Musical Allies,” with music by Lord Berners, John Foulds and their European colleaguesDebussy and Stravinsky. Featuring Becky Troxler on flute, soprano Penelope Jensen, Jane Hawkins and Randall Love on piano,and comments by musicologist Philip Rupprecht.TOP LEFT: Duke students take in The Vorticists.TOP RIGHT: Mark Antliff, professor in Art, Art History &Visual Studies, and co-curator of The Vorticists, poses near a1914 marble sculpture by Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. Photo byDuke Photography.BOTTOM: Gallery photo by Peter Paul Geoffion.“Art with the Experts” with curators Juline Chevalier and Sarah Schroth at Durham Public Library.Annual Semans Lecture by Philip Rylands, director of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice.Free Family Day EventFirst Thursday gallery talk with Mark Antliff, professor in Duke’s Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies and co-curatorof The Vorticists, and Scott Klein, associate professor and chairman of the English Department, Wake Forest University.Free film series with Ken Russell’s Savage Messiah and Ezra Pound: American Odyssey by Lawrence Pitkethlyp.16 The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918 The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918 p. 17