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People have lived in this area since the Neolithic period, but it has been continuously inhabited since the conquest by Roman legions, who established an outpost and took over the existing castros in the area. It developed into a military centre known for its baths. The Romans built defensive walls, spanned the river with a bridge, and exploited the local mines. The importance of the town led to it being elevated to the status of a city in 79 AD, during the reign of the first Flavian Caesar, which was also reflected in its name, Aquae Flaviae.
Rome's hegemony lasted until the 3rd century, when, successively, the Suebi and Visigoths as well as the Alani colonized the settlements of Chaves. The area surrendered to Islamic forces at around 714-716. The city was conquered by Alfonso I of Asturias in 773 and repopulated in 868 by Alfonso III of Asturias. Battles between Christian and Muslim forces then continued until the 11th century, when Alfonso V of León permanently reconquered Coimbra, establishing a firm buffer-zone to the south. He reconstructed, settled and encircled the settlement of Chaves with walls, in addition to establishing a Jewish quarter in the community. It was in the reign of Afonso I of Portugal that it was taken from León and firmly integrated into the Kingdom of Portugal domain (1160). Owing to its geographic location King Denis, ordered the construction of a castle to protect the kingdom's border.
The Portuguese artist Nadir Afonso was born in Chaves in 1920. Before devoting himself entirely to the geometric abstractionist, he worked as an architect with Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, among others.
His home town has dedicated a very modern museum to him.
Nadir Afonso / Labirinto / 1968
Photography has to be objective!
People, when looking at a picture, have to “see” the fork, the person, the sunset, the automobile.
But, further than the subject itself, more than the “what”, they also have to “see” the “where”: the table, the house, the sea, the road.
If any of those items aren’t readable at a glance, the viewer rejects the photograph or, at least, we ear the old six FAQ about photography.
Painters, as abstractionists or surrealists, have more freedom with their work, since the public, together with the understanding, try to feel something, knowing than that was the goal of the painter.
As for us, poor photographers, we have to walk through one of three options:
Either we don’t worry about those readings and questions and keep doing what we like and how we like;
Or we have to do it in a way that the viewer have to think and try to find out what we have to say;
Or we do a fast and easy pictures, with fast and easy readings, and give the public a pre-digest photography, with no questions made, but also with no answers.
This photograph was done in June 2008, some days before the 21th, somewhere around the 6 pm. This is the “When”.
And it was done by me. This is the “Who”.
It took place in the park where I use to do my “Oldfashion” project. This is the “Where”.
The rock is one that I use to take with me, as a helper to thinking and has something like 10 cm height. The background is the pavement of the park. This is the “What”.
The rock was on the ground, secured with a little piece of wood on the back and away from the lens. I use my Pentax K100D, with a 18-55mm lens, wide open and with the smaller diaphragm I could get. It was on the ground and I was knelling, peeping trough an 90º angle viewfinder. If I didn’t use it, I had to lay on the pavement, like a worm. This is the “How”.
I had in mind, when doing it, an homage to our ancestors, those of pre-historical times, that were able to identify the four main days of the year: the equinoxes and the solstices. And, having no writings, mat or other sciences known to us, aligned those huge monuments made of stone, pointing to the sunsets of those special days. Those achievements make me be with my mouth wide open, considering us, today, ignorant and unable to do anything deserving special recognition. This is the “Why”.
But the “whys” aren’t important to most of viewers, since their questions has been always about the “Whats” and the “Hows”. Even after reading the text.
Being so:
Either I’m a poor photographer, since I failed in communicating my message, the supposed main goal of photography;
Or photography is, in fact, a copy of the material universe and not at all the inside world of the photographer, expressed trough light and shadows on a flat surface.
Texto e imagem: by me
Kenneth Noland American, 1924 - 2010
The Clown, 1959
East Building, Upper Level — Gallery 407-C
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter, considered by some „quite possibly the greatest colorist since Matisse”. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School movement. In 1964 Noland occupied half the American pavilion at the Venice Biennale. In 1965 his work was exhibited at the Washington Gallery of Modern Art and the Jewish Museum (New York). In 1977 he was honored by a major retrospective at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, in New York that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC. and the Toledo Museum of Art, in Ohio in 1978. In 2006 Noland's Stripe Paintings were exhibited at the Tate in London.
Kenneth Noland's Color Field painting, which was categorized by Clement Greenberg as belonging to the "Post-Painterly Abstraction" movement, was some of the most focused and consistent art produced in mid-20th-century America. After studying under such artists as Ilya Bolotowsky and Josef Albers and working alongside fellow second-generation Color Field abstractionists like Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, Noland developed a signature style based on simplified abstract forms, including targets, chevrons, and stripes. Noland's paintings are characterized by strikingly minimalist compositions of shape and color. In this regard, Noland's art has influenced a wide range of contemporary abstractionists who continue to experiment with highly simplified forms and pure saturated color.
www.theartstory.org/artist/noland-kenneth/
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www.nga.gov/about/welcome-to-the-east-building.html
The East Building opened in 1978 in response to the changing needs of the National Gallery, mainly to house a growing collection of modern and contemporary art. The building itself is a modern masterpiece. The site's trapezoidal shape prompted architect I.M. Pei's dramatic approach: two interlocking spaces shaped like triangles provide room for a library, galleries, auditoriums, and administrative offices. Inside the ax-blade-like southwest corner, a colorful, 76-foot-long Alexander Calder mobile dominates the sunlight atrium. Visitors can view a dynamic 500-piece collection of photography, paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and media arts in thought-provoking chronological, thematic, and stylistic arrangements.
Highlights include galleries devoted to Mark Rothko's giant, glowing canvases; Barnett Newman's 14 stark black, gray, and white canvas paintings from The Stations of the Cross, 1958–1966; and several colorful and whimsical Alexander Calder mobiles and sculptures. You can't miss Katharina Fritsch's Hahn/Cock, 2013, a tall blue rooster that appears to stand guard over the street and federal buildings from the roof terrace, which also offers views of the Capitol. The upper-level gallery showcases modern art from 1910 to 1980, including masterpieces by Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Sam Gilliam, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol. Ground-level galleries are devoted to American art from 1900 to 1950, including pieces by George Bellows, Edward Hopper, Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, and Alfred Stieglitz. The concourse level is reserved for rotating special exhibitions.
The East Building Shop is on the concourse level, and the Terrace Café looks out over the atrium from the upper level.
www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/oct/03/national-gallery-...
"The structure asks for its visitors to gradually make their way up from the bottom, moving from the Gallery’s earliest acquisitions like the paintings of French Post-Impressionist Pierre Bonnard to its contemporary work, such as Janine Antoni’s much fussed over “Lick and Lather,” a series of busts composed of chocolate and soap. The bottom floors offer a more traditional viewing experience: small taupe-colored rooms leading to more small taupe-colored rooms. As one moves upward, however, the spaces open up, offering more dramatic and artful exhibition rooms. The largest single aspect of the I.M. Pei-designed building’s renovation has been the addition of a roof terrace flanked by a reimagination two of the three original “tower” rooms of Pei’s design.
On one side is a space dedicated to sculptor Alexander Calder, with gently spinning mobiles of all shapes and sizes delicately cascading from the ceiling. The subtle movements of the fine wire pieces mimic the effect of a slight breeze through wind chimes—it’s both relaxing and slightly mesmerizing, especially when we’re used to art that stands stock still. Delight is a relatively rare emotion to emerge in a museum, making it all the more compelling.
But it’s the tower space on the other side—a divided hexagonal room—that caused several visitors to gasp as I surveyed it. On one side of the division (the room you enter from the roof terrace) hang Barnett Newman’s fourteen “Stations of the Cross,” the human-sized renderings of secular suffering and pain conceived in conversation with the Bible story. Entirely black and white, with just a tinge of red in the final painting, the series wraps around the viewer, fully encapsulating you in the small but meaningful differentiations between paintings. Hung as a series, the paintings gain a narrative they might otherwise have lost.
The light edging around either side of the room’s division invite the viewer to move from Newman’s chiaroscuric works, which require you to move from painting to painting searching for the scene in each, to a mirror image of that space covered in Mark Rothko’s giant, glowing canvases, which require the viewer to step back and attempt to take in the sight of so much hazy, vivid color all at once. The dichotomy is stark, and yet the paintings all work together somehow, rather than one set repelling the other.
With light filtering through the glass ceiling above, the tower room does feel like a crescendo of sorts, but not in the way many museums’ most famous or valuable pieces often do. The room isn’t dedicated to ensuring that visitors snake their way into the belly of the museum, to first be captured and then let out through the gift shop. Instead, it’s a reminder that in a space dedicated to honoring the modern and the contemporary that the evolution of art remains just as integral as any singular Marilyn Monroe by Andy Warhol or Donald Judd aluminum box. There’s still a story in abstract art."
www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/28/national-gallery-art-eas...
bCA Galleries is pleased to be associated with the current Artist in Focus - Dhirendra Mandge. He was the only abstractionist chosen for the show ‘Parenthesis’ held in Pakistan last year. His works radiate energy and positive vibes. We explore the varied dimensions of his paintings in an interview.
To read more about this: www.bcagalleries.com/notesboard.asp?CAT_ID=4644&paren...
Installation view of Abstractionists
Harbourfront Centre
January 23 - June 19, 2016
Photography: Tom Bilenkey
Installation view of Abstractionists
Harbourfront Centre
January 23 - June 19, 2016
Photography: Tom Bilenkey