Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective
Francis Bacon (British, 1909–1992) Portrait of Michel Leiris
The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most important painters of the twentieth-century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features 130 works (65 paintings and 65 archival items) that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. The landmark exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, which mark the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, bring together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. This presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992. The Metropolitan is the sole U.S. venue for this exhibition, which draws from public and private collections around the world.
Accompanied by a catalogue.
The exhibition is made possible in part by The Daniel and Estrellita Brodsky Foundation and Paula Cussi.
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Tate Britain, London, in partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Big Bambu-Along the Hudson River
Moving Bambu on the Hudson River
Inside the broken down blue metal warehouse that once produced some of the most important bronze sculptures on the east coast, former Tallix foundry is the oddest installation this man has ever seen.
The "Big Bambu" Not Cheech and Chong's Big Bambu although the artist did have the record albumn in the warehouse. The two artist Doug and Mike Starn of starnstudio.com have created a warehouse full of bambu stacked to the ceiling with an archway that invites the viewer to walk into the show and be part of it.
Big Bambu isn't a static installation. It is always moving. It started on one side of the warehouse and is moving to the other, it moves over top of itself. When you walk in you will look and keep looking up because this stack of bambu is 3 stories high and in the mix of bambu poles you will find mountain climbers moving poles from one side to the other.
In September 2008, the Starns took over the former Tallix Foundry in Beacon, New York (50 foot high ceilings by 320-foot long by 65 foot wide), and the construction of Big Bambú immediately started. As of November 15th, more than 2,000 bamboo poles have been assembled creating an extraordinary intricate mental and physical network system
This artwork, in the realm of architecture and performance, starts as a massive tower created from lashed together bamboo poles and brings into space representations of complexity and chaos. At its pinnacle, the continually evolving architecture being built from within (no outside scaffolding or support) will cantilever out as far as the bamboo poles network allows, and then will bridge down to the floor. At this point the first tower will be dismantled pole by pole and carried through the structure and down to create another monumental tower and then on again, walking down the 320 feet space, almost like a Slinky and then back again. Big Bambú will evolve through the continuous rebuilding and rethinking of the structure at all times.
The Starns are directing 8 to 15 rock climbers at a time, who are assembling the structure’s vernacular network in an ongoing action. Big Bambú is consistent with the idea of a self-healing organism; within this “fabric” of bamboo pole network, the artists expect that some poles will stress and fail, but that the structure (the bamboo poles are fibrous and flexible unlike wooden boards that crack and break apart) will maintain some integrity. The tower represents the concepts of self-organization, adaptation and the interconnectedness of all things.
Big Bambú is connotative of an autonomous, spontaneous, self-governing, disorganized network responding to itself to better navigate the environment. “It represents me- in that I am who I was, and, I am completely different than I was when I was a little boy.” Doug Starn writes.
The Starns are currently developing a tentative exhibition project focusing on Big Bambú, with the Detroit Institute of Arts for the fall of 2010, and potential venues in Naples (Italy).
The visuals on this Website will be regularly updated, showing the continuous evolution of the artwork and its evolving incarnation.