Still-life works embrace a moment in time and create a memory that combines real life and its representation in art. Objects of Wonder: Four Centuries of Still Life from the Norton Museum of Art is a selection of more than 50 paintings, sculptures, and photographs from the 17th through the 20th centuries that will focus on the depiction of inanimate objects. Featured artists will include Marsden Hartley, Henri Matisse, Robert Mapplethorpe, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Yinka Shonibare. This exhibition will present important works that illustrate both aspects of the genre­—objects as stand-alone imagery and those serving as one element of a larger composition. The out-of-the-ordinary assortment of works come together to form such themes as table settings, flowers, fruits and vegetables, fish, and works in three dimensions. Along with the Norton Museum of Art’s selections, the exhibition will include numerous examples of still life from the Portland Museum of Art’s collection as well as from private lenders. In addition, embedded within the exhibition will be an interactive cabinet of curiosities—a cabinet, which not only displays unique decorative art objects from the Museum’s collection, but also allows visitors to create and sketch their own still-life arrangements.

This exhibition was organized by the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida.

Press

Portland Press Herald: GO, Thu, 2/4

Related Programs

Chef’s Choice: Local Chefs Share Favorite Food Movies: Sun, 2/7, 21, & 28

February Vacation Week: Make Your Still-Life Masterpiece: Tues through Thur, 2/16, 17, & 18

Family Festival: Big Fun with Big Food: Sat, 2/20

Lecture: Media Chef: Lou Ekus: Sat, 2/27

The Drawing Club: Wednesdays with Objects of Wonder: Wednesdays, March 3, 10, 17, & 24, 10 a.m. to Noon. 

2010 Bernard A. Osher Lecture: Judith Jones: Tues, 3/9

Daniel Seghers, A Garland of Pink Roses…, oil on canvas, 17 x 20 1/2 inches, Norton Museum of Art. Gift of Valerie Delacorte in memory of George T. Delacorte, Publisher and Philanthropist

A collage (from the French, coller, to glue) is a work of art made from the assemblage of different pieces, thus creating a whole new art form. It became a distinctive part of the modern movement in the early 20th century, used by Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso at the height of synthetic cubism. This exhibition, featuring 34 works from the Museum’s collection and selected loans from contemporary Maine artists, demonstrates how collages by the renowned German modernist Kurt Schwitters and Surrealists Jean Arp and Joan Miró influenced the work of Abstract Expressionists including Anne Ryan, James Brooks, and John Hultberg. The exhibition also illustrates how Maine artists today continue to draw on the inventive nature of collage for works in a variety of media. Henry Wolyniec’s abstract collotypes combine printmaking and traditional cut-paper compositions; Tom Hall’s landscape paintings include found-paper elements; and Aaron Stephan’s portraits are composed of deconstructed anatomy book illustrations.


To view a complete list of artists, please click here.

In the News:
Maine Sunday Telegram: Review by Daniel Kany - 12/27/09

Kurt Schwitters (Germany, 1887–1948), MZ 26, 44 res, 1926, collage on paper, 6 3/8 x 4 5/8 inches, Portland Museum of Art.

This year’s new acquisitions exhibition is devoted to black-and-white photography, one of the strengths of the Museum’s growing collection. The exhibition includes 37 photographs, ranging from romanticized scenes of Maine agrarian life in the early 20th century by Chansonetta Emmons, to mid-century documents by photojournalist Verner Reed and contemporary images of an elderly Mainer by Jon Edwards. In 2009 the Museum received its first Diane Arbus images and our collection of Berenice Abbott photographs has been significantly augmented by a prime example of her New York work. New photographs by John Willis and Tom Young, photographers from western Massachusetts, provide a photographic essay for a new book that examines the environment at a recycled paper factory. Other photographers in the exhibition include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tillman Crane, Kris Larson, O. Winston Link, Philip Rogers, and Paul Strand.

Verner Reed III (United States, 1923–2006), Untitled, from Operation Potato, 1954, 2006, gelatin silver print.

The Portland Museum of Art presents eight figurative N. C. Wyeth masterworks in an exhibition that explores the artist’s role in the creation of a mythic American historical landscape. Robust, intelligent, and extraordinarily productive, N. C. Wyeth (1882–1945) created bold imagery that animated poems, novels, and historical texts by such well-known authors as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Fenimore Cooper, and Robert Louis Stevenson. The most famous illustrator of his day, Wyeth’s vision of the past imbued his art with a heroic quality that colored the very way a generation viewed its nation.

N.C. Wyeth (United States, 1882–1945), Black Spruce Ledge, 1941, tempera and oil on Renaissance panel, 42 x 52 inches. Collection of Linda Bean Folkers.