Krannert Art Museum: Exhibitions Guide Archive: Nature and Landscape

A Prairie State of Mind by Larry Kanfer Celebrating the American heartland as only Larry Kanfer can, A Prairie State of Mind takes readers over fields fertile and fallow and through the eternal cycle of the seasons. Walk roads melodic with birdsong and the chatter of cicadas. Look onto hillsides plowed into geometric perfection while breathtaking thunderheads boil overhead. Experience barn textures and rusted sheds pulled from the past and wind turbines signaling the future. Selected from Kanfer's new collection, A Prairie State of Mind portrays a land of serene beauty and startling contrasts. His perspectives, landscapes, and details embrace the Midwest, confirming that throughout the day and across time, the prairie connects us all.

Wilderness by Johanna Laub (Text by); Esther Schlicht (Text by); Reiko Tomii (Epilogue by); Karen Kurczynski (Text by); Cord Riechelmann (Text by); Philippe Descola (Text by) At a time when blank spots have by and large disappeared from maps, 'wilderness' has returned in art.Expeditions as an artistic medium, visions of a post-human world, or renegotiations of the relationship between human beings and animals influence the work of many contemporary artists.The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt has dedicated an extensive theme-based exhibition to this recurring fascination.Since the beginning of aesthetic modernity, the wild, the untamed, the uncultivated has again and again cast a spell over artists.The exhibition brings together paintings, photographs, video works, sculptures, and installations that examine the multifaceted connections between wilderness and art from 1900 to the present.The accompanying publication provides fascinating insights into the artistic positions.English and German text.Accompanies the exhibition 'Wilderness', 1 Nov 2018 - 3 Feb 2019, The Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt.

Maya Lin by Richard Andrews; John Beardsley; Lawrence Weschler (Foreword by) "Utilizing the way in which scientists and computers see our world, drawing on images based on sonar views of the ocean floor, to aerial and satellite views of the land, I have started to create artworks that translate that technological view into sculptural forms.” (Maya Lin) One of the most celebrated artists working in the United States, Maya Lin (b. 1959) came to prominence in 1981 with her design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Generously illustrated and beautifully designed, Systematic Landscapes traces her continued fascination with geologic phenomena and topography, integrating natural contours and materials into evocative landscape sculptures such as Character of a Hill Under Glass (2002) and 11 Minute Line (2004). As the book reveals, Lin’s earthworks and public sculptures have always developed alongside small-scale, exploratory sculptures and monumental temporary installations, such as Avalanche (1998), through which Lin evokes the physical processes that shape the earth. This important volume also introduces three major new installation works created for the "Systematic Landscapes" exhibition, along with a series of related drawings and reliefs demonstrating the expanding scope of Lin’s creative process. The largest of these installations, 2 x 4 Landscape, is composed from more than 45,000 sections of lumber placed on end that from a distance take on a pixel-like image of a hill, and close up create a form that evokes both mound and wave, earth and water. Systematic Landscapes is of interest to newcomers to Maya Lin's work as well as to longtime enthusiasts of her unique artistic creations and stunning design work.

Sally Mann by Sally Mann (By (photographer)); Sarah Greenough; Sarah Kennel; Hilton Als (Contribution by); Malcolm Daniel (Contribution by); Drew Gilpin Faust (Contribution by); National Gallery of Art (Produced by); Peabody Essex Museum (Produced by) For more than 40 years, Sally Mann (b. 1951) has made experimental, elegiac, and hauntingly beautiful photographs that explore the overarching themes of existence: memory, desire, death, the bonds of family, and nature's magisterial indifference to human endeavor. What unites this broad body of work - portraits, still lifes, landscapes, and other studies - is that it is all "bred of a place," the American South. Mann, who is a native of Lexington, Virginia, uses her deep love of her homeland and her knowledge of its historically fraught heritage to ask powerful, provocative questions - about history, identity, race, and religion - that reverberate across geographic and national boundaries. Organized into five sections - Family, The Land, Last Measure, Abide with Me, and What Remains - and including many works not previously exhibited or published, Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings is a sweeping overview of Mann's artistic achievements.

As in Nature by Alexandra Schwartz; Christina Kee Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) was a pioneer of Abstract Expressionism and of the later Color Field movement. She found inspiration in nature, including the idyllic, wooded landscapes of the northeastern United States. This beautiful publication celebrates Frankenthaler and the extraordinary holdings of her work in the collection of the late William Louis-Dreyfus. An avid admirer of Frankenthaler, Louis-Dreyfus collected more than twenty of her paintings, most from the under-studied later decades of her career when she explored techniques of layering color. With beautiful illustrations of works from Louis-Dreyfus's collection, as well as several from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, this publication makes a significant contribution to the study of works from this later period in Frankenthaler's illustrious career.   

Landscape painting now : from pop abstraction to new romanticism by Bradway, Todd, editor.; Schwabsky, Barry, writer of supplementary textual content.; Shane, Robert R., contributor.; Sorensen, Louise, contributor.; Van Scoy, Susan A., contributor.

Art of the Landscape by R. Milani Aesthetics deals with art, a human construction, but what one experiences when placed before nature is also an aesthetic feeling - the countryside is a place of reflection like no other. In The Art of the Landscape, Raffaele Milani interprets natural landscapes as an aesthetic category. Drawing from philosophical traditions, literature, and art, he calls the reader's attention to a special consciousness, originally established during the pre-Romantic age, that has become a distinctive feature of contemporary spirituality. Focusing on the definition of landscapes in relation to the concepts of nature, environment, territory, and man-made settings such as gardens and cities, Milani examines the origins of the predilection for natural scenery in the works of landscape painters and in travel literature. He addresses the distinctness of the aesthetic experience of landscapes, analyses the role of aesthetic categories, and explores landscape art as a medium of contemplation. What emerges is an original morphology of natural beauty derived from the scrutiny of landscape elements most frequently associated with aesthetic emotion - the colour of water and the sky, earth and stones, fire and volcanic eruptions, ruins and the mountains - an analysis especially relevant given the increasing fragility of our natural environment.