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“The earth will be a heaven in the 21st century in comparison with what it is now.”

Madame Blavatsky

This proclamation, written in the late 19th century by a founder of the Theosophical Society, an esoteric group that studied and practiced an amalgamation of world religions and philosophy, is called into question with one glance at a newspaper today. That countries in the Middle East and Africa, where genocide and civil war conveniently stay at the margins of most Westerners’ daily existence, are dealing with the legacy of European imperialism carried out at the very moment that this optimistic proclamation was issued makes it especially suspect.

The artist and collector Katherine Dreier was a follower of Madame Blavatsky’s theosophy, along with many of the artists that she collected and exhibited, including Piet Mondrian and Vasily Kandinsky. Along with Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Dreier in 1920 set up the Société Anonyme, the focus of a startling exhibition recently at the Dallas Museum of Art and now at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville, as a way to promote modern art that held the potential for radical social and spiritual transformation similar to that espoused by theosophy.

Between 1920 and 1940, the society held 80 exhibitions, as well as sponsoring lectures, concerts and publications. In the process, the Société Anonyme introduced America to the most progressive and radical experiments in art going on in Europe at the time. The Museum of Modern Art in New York was the only other institution doing similar work. But Alfred H. Barr Jr., its first director, had a different vision of modernism, a view that remains with us to this day as the dominant historical model.

Noah Simblist is an artist and critic living in Dallas, TX
(Copyright Noah Simblist 2008)

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Katherine Drier

Still wondering about the Arts in the state of Texas? Need more insightful issues from Noah Simblist? For more great Lone Star Reports and Past Issues, Click Below and Scroll to find the Issue

The thing about inspiration is that you can’t plan it; inspiration comes along whenever it does, like a butterfly flitting through a garden that – due to a random confluence of events – decides to land on your hair. There you are, in the middle of a sunny afternoon checking your plants, and you freeze. It’s as if, in that moment, everything slows down to the graceful pace of patience and clarity. And then the butterfly darts off and you wait, the remnants of a smile fading as the phone begins to ring from inside the house and you remember whatever it was you came into the garden to try to forget for a moment.

The butterfly analogy is an apt introduction to the particularly inspiring Maria Sibylla Merian, 17th century artist, scientist, and businesswoman whose fantastically modern drawings of plants and insects are currently on view at the Getty. When I set off for an afternoon at the Getty with my mom, I anticipated a nice day, perhaps a walk through the labyrinthine garden after looking at the drawings and having some lunch. I hadn’t read the press kit carefully and wasn’t anticipating that I would be introduced, via her art, to such an intriguing woman; the meeting was all the more fascinating for its unexpectedness.

Four rooms of the Getty are dedicated to the exhibition, Maria Sybilla Merian & Daughters: Women of Art and Science, organized by the Getty together with the Rembrandt Museum in Amsterdam and curated by Dutch art historian, Ella Reitsma, with the Getty’s presentation curated by Stephanie Schrader, assistant curator of drawings. Flowers, butterflies, lizards, branches, and more are portrayed with such diligence and passion that they seem to live and breathe on the page. It sounds dramatic, but that’s exactly the impact that Merian's images of swirling stems and delicate tendrils, gaudy wings and ripe fruit, exotic insects and ordinary centipedes had on me as I wandered the rooms observing them.

Schrader’s installation includes numerous drawings by Merian’s contemporaries, including Albrecht Durer, Hans Hoffmann, Merian’s stepfather and teacher, Jacob Marrell. The juxtaposition of Merian’s work next to these shows her to be an artist with a unique perspective; the light, bright color and fluid, at times wild, motion of her lines stands apart from the more somber works of her predecessors and contemporaries. From the age of thirteen, Merian had been painting nature as she saw it. And though her style advanced, and she eventually rendered a multitude of species - many of which she raised herself to allow her to draw directly from life - the power of her first watercolor of a pomegranate resonates throughout the works in the exhibition.

Annie Buckley is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles, CA
(Copyright Annie Buckley, June, 2008)

For more great articles by Annie Buckley and Past Issues, Click Below and Scroll to find the Issue

Thinking about a past Travelogue, or just can't seem to get enough? For More Great Travelogues and Past Issues, Click Below and Scroll to find the Issue

A quick way to see all Museum events and exhibitions closing this month

Getty

Ten Years in Focus: The Artist and the Camera
Through August 10, 2008

LACMA

A Connoisseur's Delights: Indian Paintings from the Nasli and Alice Heeramaneck Collection
Through August 2008

A Masterpiece Restored: LACMA's Tibetan Painting of Yama and Yami
Through August 2008

Hammer Museum

MOCA

Red dates indicate opening receptions posted on Around Town

LACMA lands Ed Kienholz's 'The Illegal Operation'

Quick Takes

Bowers Museum nears attendance record with 'Terra Cotta Warriors'

Quick Takes

'Walking With Dinosaurs' show coming to Southland