The Wachenheim Gallery focuses on the history of The New York Public Library, from its founding and original collections to the construction of its Beaux-Arts building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, which was dedicated by President William Howard Taft on May 23, 1911, to the ongoing work of the Library through the century.
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Design critic Alice Rawsthorn recently wrote: "Here’s the skinny. Modernism is dead, and design needs a new “ism” to define it. Whatever that “ism” turns out to be, it needs to be all of the following: ethically and environmentally responsible; socially and geographically inclusive; collaborative; networked; sensitive to nature; and savvy enough to make the most of: a) leaps in technology, and b) both globalism and localism."
Enter a new publication by Michiel Schwarz and Joost Elffers titled "Sustainism is the New Modernism." The authors will be on hand at the New York Public Library on Wednesday, January 12th to discuss the book. Their "sustainist manifesto" aims to give voice to a worldwide movement already defining our future, disseminates the zeitgeist of our culture, examines our relationship to cities, homes, technology and progress, and names the next age of design.
The exhibition of the American sculptor's work comprises nearly 100 pieces, from his earliest monochromatic welded iron-rod sculptures to the large-scale foil creations of recent years. This presentation encompasses Chamberlain’s shifts in scale, materials, and methods, informed by the assemblage aesthetic that has been central to his artistic practice.
Best known for his fluorescent light installations, Dan Flavin was also an avid draftsman. This first retrospective of his drawings will include over one hundred sheets representing every phase of his career: early abstract expressionist watercolors of the 1950s, studies for light installations, portraits and landscape sketches, and pastels of sailboats from the 1980s. In addition, the exhibition will feature nearly fifty works from Flavin's personal collection of drawings, including nineteenth-century American landscapes by Hudson River School artists, Japanese drawings, and twentieth-century works by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Donald Judd, and Sol LeWitt.
In 1922 Vasily Kandinsky (b. 1866, Moscow; d. 1944, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France) accepted a teaching position at the Bauhaus, the state-sponsored Weimar school of art and applied design founded in 1919 by architect Walter Gropius. The school’s curriculum was based on the principle that the crafts were equal to the traditional arts and was organized according to a medieval-style guild system of training under the tutelage of masters. Kandinsky conducted the Wall Painting Workshop and Preliminary Course and taught at all three of the school’s sequential locations in Weimar, Dessau, and Berlin until 1933, when the Bauhaus was closed due to pressure from the National Socialist (Nazi) government.
Geometric shapes came to play a dominant role in Kandinsky’s pictorial vocabulary at the Bauhaus; the artist, who was interested in uncovering a universal aesthetic language, increased his use of overlapping, flat planes and clearly delineated forms. This change was due, in part, to his familiarity with the Suprematist work of Kazimir Malevich and the art of the Constructivists. Kandinsky’s turn toward geometric forms was also likely a testament to the influence of industry and developments in technology.
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