“Inside of us, there’s a continual autumn.
Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water.”
Rumi
Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive
Edward Ruscha
Oil on canvas
"In Bouncing Marbles, Bouncing Apple, Bouncing Olive, Edward Ruscha explores an obscure language of visual relationships. He divorces the objects depicted from their everyday contexts by placing them within an infinite, surreal space. The relationships that exist among the marbles, apples and olive are equally interpretations. The marbles might refer to childhood, the olive to hors d'oeuvres and martinis and the apple to the Fall of Adam and Eve. Such a reading makes this a meditation on the loss of innocence. Alternatively, Ruscha may have constructed a playful dialog among round forms or a treatise on Newton's law."
Starboat (Tugboat and Riverboat) 1966
Wayne Thiebaud
Oil on canvas
Starboat (Tugboat and Riverboat) is painted with Thiebaud's characteristic sensuous colors and thick impasto. The boat and its reflection are rendered with delicate brush strokes. Sea and sky, boldly defined by a yellow and green horizon line, are laid out in broad swaths with a palette knife. While Thiebaud's work has been associated with Pop art because of its focus on the everyday objects of popular culture, he sees it as part of a long realist tradition.
The Red Sail
Paul-Henri Bourguignon
Gouache on paper
"As an art critic, journalist, and skilled photographer, Bourguignon traveled widely through France, Spain, and Italy, North Africa, Corsica, and Yugoslavia. He lived in Peru and later Haiti, where he met his wife, Erika, a renowned anthropologist. The couple settled in Columbus, Ohio in 1950 after Erika joined the faculty of The Ohio State University.
During his long and prolific life, Bourguignon amassed a large and varied group of paintings—early gouaches and later acrylics—and numerous pencil, pastel and ink-wash drawings. Many of the gouache paintings from the 1950s and 1960s depict tranquil landscapes, rich cultural interpretations and evocative portraits, figures, and genre scenes that were derived from his travels. In the 1970s, his landscapes and figural scenes took new directions and became less specifically descriptive. The works were expressionistic, often with whimsical, vulnerable, or tragic figures revealed in delightfully complex interactions of brushstrokes and texture."
“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world
… as in being able to remake ourselves.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Mirror Stage, 2012
Ilit Azoulay
Inkjet print
In Mirror Stage, Ilit Azoulay combines images of a building taken at various angles and vantage points to create a new, digitally fabricated interior. The panorama is part of her series Imaginary Order (2008-2017). The project focused on the renovation of a well-known Brutalist-style building in the Israeli town of Zichron Ya'Akov. The artist photographed the structure over the course of seven years as it was transformed from a convalescent home into an art center and luxury hotel. The building's shift in function paralleled socio-political changes as Israel moved away from socialism to a capitalist economic model. Azoulay's re-creation merges elements of past, present, and future, to fabricate a never-to-be realized photographic plan.
Reduce/Increase, 1979
William Wegman
Gelatin silver print
This photograph, from a series titled Improved Photographs, depicts artist William Wegman dressed as a woman. Handwritten texts on the print's surface are meant to emulate a magazine editor's comments to "improve" a model's body. With characteristic wit and humor, Wegman exposes the deceptive nature of editorial and fashion photography, while also poking fun at idealized gender norms for physical appearance.
