Visit to the Decordova, Lincoln, MA

Our first site visit was to the Decordova Museum in Lincoln, Ma. We were treated to a private tour of the sculpture garden highlighting the biggest names represented at the museum. Here are a few of the sculptors we looked at.

 Jim Dine - "Two big Hearts"

Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935) is an American pop artist. Jim Dine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1935. He studied at the University of Cincinnati, the Boston Museum School, and in 1957 received a bachelor of fine arts degree from Ohio University. After graduation, he moved to New York City and became involved with a circle of artists—including Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, and Roy Lichtenstein.

As an artist, Mr. Dine incorporates images of everyday objects in his artwork, but he diverges from the coldness and impersonal nature of pop art by making works that fuse personal passions and everyday experiences. His repeated use of familiar and personally significant objects, such as a robe, hands, tools, and hearts, is a signature of his art.

In his early work, Mr. Dine created mostly assemblages in which he attached actual objects to his painted canvases, as in Shoes Walking on My Brain (1960). From 1959 to 1960, Mr. Dine also was a pioneer of happenings, works of art that took the form of theatrical events or demonstrations.

In 1967, Jim Dine and his family moved to London, England, where he devoted his energies to printmaking and drawing. When he returned to the United States in 1971, he concentrated on figure drawing. Jim Dine is considered among the most accomplished draftsmen of his generation, and is known for his series of self-portraits and portraits of his wife, Nancy. Mr. Dine's attention turned to sculptural work in the early 1980s when he created sculptures based on the ancient sculpture Venus de Milo. His recent art uses imagery borrowed from ancient Greek, Egyptian, and African objects.

Sources:http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Jim_Dine.html

             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Dine

Ursula von Rydingsvard was born in Deensen, Germany in 1942. She received a BA and an MA from the University of Miami, Coral Gables (1965), an MFA from Columbia University (1975), and an honorary doctorate from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (1991). Von Rydingsvard’s massive sculptures reveal the trace of the human hand and resemble wooden bowls, tools, and walls that seem to echo the artist’s family heritage in pre-industrial Poland before World War II. Having spent her childhood in Nazi slave labor and post-war refugee camps, the artist’s earliest recollections of displacement and subsistence through humble means infuses her work with emotional potency. Von Rydingsvard builds towering cedar structures, creating an intricate network of individual beams, shaped by sharp and lyrical cuts and glued together to form sensuous, puzzle-like surfaces. While abstract at its core, Von Rydingsvard’s work takes visual cues from the landscape, the human body, and utilitarian objects—such as the artist’s collection of household vessels—and demonstrates an interest in the point where the man-made meets nature.
For more information:
http://www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net/


Source: http://www.ursulavonrydingsvard.net

 

"5 Brushstrokes"-Artist's proof

 Roy Lichtenstein(1923-1997) is a pop art painter whose works, in a style derived from comic strips, portray the trivialization of culture endemic in contemporary American life. Using bright, strident colors and techniques borrowed from the printing industry, he ironically incorporates mass-produced emotions and objects into highly sophisticated references to art history.
For more information:
http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org/

Source: http://www.lichtensteinfoundation.org

 "Texas Triangles"

Charles Ginnever is an American sculptor. He was born in San Mateo, California, in 1931. In 1957, he received his BA from the San Francisco Art Institute and received his MFA from Cornell University in 1959. He started working with canvas and steel scraps painted with bright patterns. The movement toward Minimalism saw the use of color fade and he focused on steel shapes consisting of triangles and trapezoids that cause his work to change shape as the viewer moves around it. He has held numerous teaching positions while continuing to participate in solo and group shows as well receiving awards and honors from his peers.
For more infomation:
http://www.chuckginnever.com/

Source: http://chuckginnever.com