GREENWICH, CT.- The Bruce Museum of Arts and Science in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents Off the Wall: Works from the JPMorgan Chase Collection from May 15, 2004, through September 12, 2004. This exhibition presents a rare chance to see selections from the renowned JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, one of the foremost corporate art collections, which includes both classic modern as well as the best contemporary works of art. The Bruce Museum is grateful to JPMorgan Chase for making their collection available for exhibition.
The exhibition focuses on the drawings in the collection, which are especially important not only because they mirror the collecting focus from its inception in 1959 to the present, but also because drawing itself has become one of the most significant means of expression in the late twentieth century. The exhibition features approximately 65 outstanding two-dimensional and sculptural works, all defined as drawings and selected from a collection of over 20,000 artworks that are installed in JPMorgan Chase offices worldwide.
"This is the second exhibition weve done in partnership with the Bruce Museum, and, in both instances, weve been able to bring a thematic body of works together so that we can share them with a broad audience," said William B. Harrison, Jr., Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, JPMorgan Chase. "At JPMorgan Chase, for more than four decades now, we have believed arts and culture are key factors in our commitment to the well-being and vitality of the communities that entrust us with their business."
The JPMorgan Chase Art Collection was begun in 1959 under the guidance of David Rockefeller, then president of the Chase Manhattan Bank. Rockefeller notes in his memoirs that the art program became a powerful expression of the banks enlightened role in modern culture. The initial decision to collect both emerging and mid-career artists was made with the assistance of a selection committee of five leading museum directors and curators. Over the years, the committee has included such illustrious names in the art field as Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller of MoMA; Perry Rathbone from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and scholars James Johnson Sweeney and Robert Rosenblum. In 1984, more than 1,200 works, approximately one-fifth of the contemporary collection at the time, were drawings. Today the larger and more diverse collection includes 4,000 drawings.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, virtually every aspect of the definition of drawing the medium with which it is made, its support, its size and scope, and perhaps even its role in the artists oeuvre has expansively changed and been made to carry more diverse meanings. While there are brilliant examples of traditional drawing made in the latter twentieth century, contemporary drawings have a very different look and meaning than their earlier counterparts. Many have been exploded in size and scale well beyond the intimate, extended into three dimensions and virtual space, and been energized by the proliferation of mechanical and electronic means of image making photography, film, video, light boxes and computer technologies. The pluralism of the twentieth century is reflected in the diverse and provocative list of materials from which drawings have been made, many examples of which are included in this exhibition.
The three-dimensional drawings are a diverse group and among the most thought provoking in the exhibition. The French artist Mathieu Merciers Good and Plenty, 2003, is not only a re-engagement with the imagery and ideas of Pop art, but also a witty commentary on American consumerism and America as a land of virtue and abundance.
Another sculptural work, Saul Steinbergs Downtown, a constructed and drawn three-dimensional representation of New York mounted on a drawing table, is at once a drawing, a sculpture, a self-portrait of the artist and a witty parody on drawing itself. Steinberg has both literally and figuratively drawn his own version of one of his favorite subjects, New York, and for emphasis set New York in a drawing and on a drawing table.
Among the best-known artists whose works are on view in the exhibition are Chuck Close and Andy Warhol. Closes process the restriction of his virtuosity within the grid and by a mind-boggling exactitude of building his work out of small units c an be seen in Phil/Fingerprint, which is made of thousands of individual stamped transfers of Closes fingerprint to the paper. Close refers, quite humorously, to drawing by hand while refuting the use of hand-drawn line. Andy Warhol created a more mechanized and impersonal result by casting images on the wall with an opaque projector and tracing them directly. Warhols drawing in this exhibition, Untitled (Campbells Tomato Soup) dates from 1985, two years before his death, and is a freehand reworking of perhaps his most famous subject.
One of the most innovative artists currently working with drawing is Vik Muniz. Drawing is Munizs primary medium, which he photographs to create the final work. Material was an important choice in Munizs interpretation of Rembrandts etching series entitled The Beggars. Muniz has created the two drawings in this exhibition in nails, both to allude to the metallic etched plate of Rembrandts process and to conjure the marks produced in etching.
In the 1980s and 90s, certain artists produced work that straddled the line between high art and down-and-dirty street vernacular. As a child, Jean Michel Basquiat, a New York-born native of Haitian and Puerto Rican descent, made drawings inspired by television cartoons. Drawing remained at the center of Basquiats art throughout his short life, the vehicle for his compelling visual language.
It is undeniably true that the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection contains some of the masterpieces of twentieth-century drawing. It is also true that drawing holds a pre-eminent place in the creation of the most current, cutting edge artwork being produced at the moment, although not perhaps the definition of drawing as we know it.
