Friday, February 22, 2013

The Morgan Library & Museum










"For several successive evenings in January 1879, Edgar Degas (1834–1917) attended performances at the Cirque Fernando by one of the most famous circus performers of his time, an aerialist known as Miss La La. For her extraordinary act, Miss La La was slowly hoisted nearly seventy feet into the circus's domed roof, suspended solely from a rope clenched between her teeth."


"Degas produced a number of studies of the performer and the circus building—drawings, pastels, and an oil sketch—before creating his celebrated painting, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. The exhibition brings together for the first time Degas's remarkable painting, on loan from the National Gallery, London, and nearly all of the related preparatory works. Also on view will be images of the Cirque Fernando by Degas's contemporaries, photographs of Miss La La and her troupe, and posters and other printed material."



Marcel Proust and Swann's Way: 100th Anniversary

Marcel Proust and his mother and brother Robert, ca. 1895.


"Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time is one of the most influential and ambitious literary works of all time. The Morgan celebrates the 1913 publication of the first of its seven volumes, Swann's Way, with a fascinating selection of the author's notebooks, preliminary drafts, galley-proofs, and other documents from the collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. The works on display will provide unique insight into Proust's creative process and the birth of his masterpiece. Also on view will be period postcards with depictions of Illiers, which served as the inspiration for Proust's fictional town Combray, and Paris. Several letters between Proust and his mother, Jeanne, from the Morgan's collection, will be included."


Drawing Surrealism


"Bringing together more than 160 works on paper by such iconic artists as Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Leonora Carrington, and Joan Miró, this is the first major exhibition to explore the central role of drawing in surrealism, one of the most important movements in twentieth-century art. Once considered a minor medium, drawing became a predominant means of expression and innovation among surrealist artists in the first half of the twentieth century, resulting in a rich array of graphic techniques including automatic drawing, collage, decalcomania, exquisite corpse, and frottage. 

Drawing Surrealism will offer multiple new perspectives on the emergence, evolution, and influence of this revolutionary movement. It will also explore the international impact of surrealist drawing by featuring important works on paper by over seventy artists from fifteen different countries, from Eastern and Western Europe, North and South America, and Japan."



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