Tag Archives: Joseph Becherer

Meijer Gardens’ Beverly Pepper exhibit highlights growing artistic research collection

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A model of Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge”, center, is one of the objects featured in the exhibit “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper”. (WKTV)

By K.D. Norris

ken@wktv.org

 

There is a progression of development for an artistic institution, in some ways gaining a particular piece of art is only the beginning of an institution’s relationship with an artist and that artist’s legacy — often, the institution becomes part of the artist legacy.

 

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park’s 2009 acquisition of Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge” — a soaring steel object of visual beauty and, simultaneously, engineering mastery which rises nearly 40 feet into the sky and an undefined depth into the ground — led directly to it gaining more than 900 artistic items associated with the artist.

 

Some of those associated artistic items, part of a trove of prints and models and photos donated by the artist to Meijer Gardens, form the focus of the current featured exhibit at Meijer Gardens, “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper”, which opened Feb. 2 and will run through April 29.

 

Those items, many of which are and will in the future will be of great interest to scholars and researchers delving into Pepper’s art and artistic process, are also an example of the ongoing progression of of Meijer Gardens from being a showcase of art to being an institution of art.

 

Joseph Antenucci Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, on the opening day of the exhibit. (WKTV)

“I think it is a natural progression,” Joseph Antenucci Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, said to WKTV. “We are a young organization, in many ways, but we are aging well and we are aging with some rapidity. And the idea that we have this enormous permanent collection, there is more than 300 sculptures in our permanent collection, that it is supplemented by prints and drawings is a natural progression.”

 

And that progression fits in naturally with the mission of Meijer Gardens.

 

“The mission of Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park has been its commitment to sculpture, and gardens and horticulture, and the arts,” Becherer said. “We are very fortunate because the vast majority of our permanent collection is out on display, all times of the year, all seasons, in the park. However, from the very beginning, we have also collected two-dimension works, prints and drawings, as long as that person was primarily recognized as a sculptor.

 

“We have prints by Henry Moore, we have prints by Louise Nevelson, we have prints by many of the other sculptors who are part of this collection,” he said. “But this group is incredible as a gift from Beverly Pepper, more than 900 works. This collection will be here permanently. It can be accessed with advance notice, by scholars, by people that are doing research. I would say that in the future, when our new building opens, it will be much easier for scholars to come in, to access the collection.”

 

And, of course, the Pepper collection also gives Meijer Gardens “the opportunity to work with sister organizations across the country, around the world, to loan objects,” he added. “So these prints and drawings would be available to them if they would want to show them, to participate in come kind of exhibition. So really it is a great resource for us, but it is a great resource for the world.”

 

 

Meijer Gardens, with acquisition, forms relationship with artist

 

Pepper’s donation, and the current exhibit, are also an example of both a unique opportunity for Meijer Gardens and a not-uncommon opportunity when an artist and an artistic institution have established a trusting relationship.

 

“What you see often time happening with major artists that don’t have their own museum or establish a big estate, or something along those lines, is that they make major gifts to cultural organizations,” Becherer said. “So we are sort of following in a time-honored tradition.”

 

And that relationship, that tradition, was touched upon in a statement by the artist herself.

 

“Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park has clearly demonstrated a strong commitment to my sculpture and I am enthusiastic to now have this major body of my work there.” Pepper said in supplied material. “To have in one location a space to study, compare and sequence my drawings and prints is an exceptional opportunity.”

 

Pepper  was born 1922 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and now lives and works in Italy. Her works have been exhibited and collected by major arts institutions and galleries around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Les Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan.

 

Pepper is world-renowned for her “monumental” works — such as “Galileo’s Wedge” — which often incorporate industrial metals like iron, bronze, stainless steel and stone into sculpture of a monumental scale.

 

Associated with the exhibit will be several special events including a March 18 discussion on “Five Great Women Sculptors” by Suzanne Eberle, Professor of Art History at Kendall College of Art & Design. The talk will focus on important female artists — including Pepper, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Hepworth, and Louise Nevelson — who have worked in large scale.

 

For more information visit meijergardens.org .

 

Meijer Gardens’ Rodin+ ArtPrize exhibit brings world of figurative sculpture to town

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Rolf Jacobsen’s work in Meijer Gardens’ “Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” exhibit.

By K.D. Norris

ken@wktv.org

 

You can easily call turn-of-the-20th Century French artist Auguste Rodin the “father” of modern figurative sculpture — Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park chief curator Joseph Becherer, no casual commentator on the subject, certainly does. But it would be a mistake classify Rodin as a “realistic” figurative artist.

 

And it would be disappointing to the viewer to assume the Garden’s ArtPrize exhibit, “Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition”, is filled with realistic artwork glorifying the human body in the styles of the classic Greco-Roman, neoclassical and Renaissance traditions.

 

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park chief curator Joseph Becherer. (Courtesy Ohio Today)

With both several works by Rodin and the works of 17 contemporary figurative sculptors and video artists in an exhibition, the Gardens and Becherer brings to town a show ranging from absolute reality of the human form, to the abstract, to the nearly absurd.

 

“Rodin was a figurative artist — he did not do landscapes, he did not enter into abstraction, he didn’t do still life or some of the other objects that one could have done,” Becherer said to WKTV. His work “helped to set a parameter, set the definition, of what is ‘figurative” and one of the reasons it is so broad (today) is because it is based on what Rodin did. … it is of the figure.”

 

Anders Krisar’s work in Meijer Gardens’ “Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” exhibit.

That “broadness” of figurative art Becherer is on full display at the Meijer Gardens show through — to scratch the surface — the startling yet somehow soothing split-image bodies of Anders Krisár, the eerily familiar disembodied faces of Natalia Arbelaez (“Game of Thrones” fan, anyone?), and a simple-yet-complex work by Rolf Jacobsen that forces the viewer to look closer, to think deeper.

 

“Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” is free to the public through the run of this year’s ArtPrize, Sept. 20 to Oct. 8, and then will continue on display through Jan. 7, 2018.

 

Natalia Arbelaez’ work in Meijer Gardens’ “Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” exhibit.

While each of the modern artists, and their works can be taken in a modern context — and can be voted upon by the public and judges for ArtPrize awards — the show offers evidence of how each artist was impacted by Rodin either directly or indirectly.

 

“This year marks Rodin’s centenary and Meijer Gardens celebrates the remarkable impact of his legacy through the work of (these) seventeen contemporary artists,” Becherer, who is also vice president of exhibitions and collections at the Gardens, said in supplied material.

 

“This exhibition allows us to explore the boldly impactful way he has inspired major aesthetic trends even today. From representations of figure to use of materials, these selected works allow us to understand both an historic icon and the vitality of the figurative tradition today,” Becherer said.

 

Rodin — full name François Auguste René Rodin (1840–1917) — was born in Paris to a working-class family, applied unsuccessfully to the city’s prestigious École des Beaux Arts three times, in no small part due to his movement away from a Neoclassical style of sculpture.

 

But from almost the moment of the unveiling of his first major piece, “Age of Bronze”, the sculptural art form was never the same.

 

And a miniature cast that work, in fact, is not only part of the current show but is the curator’s favorite of the several Rodin works on loan from the Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Snite Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

 

“The Age of Bronze” is not only one of Rodin’s major works, it sets the tone of breaking the definition of “figurative” sculpture.

“The one that I really had my heart set on was the ‘Age of Bronze’, at the introduction, because, you know, for me, it really sets this whole exhibition up because it sets up Rodin as this innovator. The one who broke the rules,” Becherer said to WKTV.

 

“When you approach it, it looks very classical, it looks Greco-Roman or something like that. But when you really study it, when you really see it in a scale model, you realize it is sort of awkward, it is sort of tripping into space. It has a kind of rough, but realistic animation to it. … I really wanted this sort of revolution to be here and to welcome people. And it was great opportunity to partner with the DIA (Detroit Institute of Art).”

 

“Rodin and the Contemporary Figurative Tradition” is recognized as one of the official centenary events of 2017 by the Musée Rodin, Paris and the international Rodin Centenary Commission, Centenaire: Rodin 100 — putting the Grand Rapids museum in the same select group as Paris’ Grand Palais and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

The exhibit, after ArtPrize closes, will include an outdoor guided sketching event on Oct. 20 focused on Rodin’s “Eve”, one of the cornerstones of the Garden’s permanent  collection, and a discussion by Becherer on Nov. 5 titled “The Rodin Revolution, In and Out of Context”.

For more information on Meijer Gardens and its ArtPrize exhibit, visit meijergardens.org.

 

Ai Weiwei at Meijer Gardens: Where art, social activism meld

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Ai Weiwei self portrait surrounded by supporters and police. (Supplied)

By K.D. Norris

ken@wktv.org

 

When asked about the artist Ai Weiwei, Ping Liang — board chair of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, international businesswoman, and a Chinese-American with a deep understanding of modern Chinese culture — readily defers artistic questions to the Garden’s chief curator.

 

But both she and Joseph Antenucci Becherer, who serves as Meijer Gardens vice president in addition to his curatorial duties, understand that to appreciate Weiwei one must go deeper than simply his art. One must understand his history and his culture, especially his social activism both inside his rigidly controlled home county and around the world.

 

Ping Liang, board chair of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, and chief curator Joseph Antenucci Becherer, in the main gallery of the exhibit “Ai Weiwei at Meijer gardens: Natural State”. (WKTV)

 

“I came to know Ai Weiwei’s reputation through the 2008 Olympic stadium, called the Bird’s Nest. At that time, his name wasn’t taken in a very good light because of the Chinese media, which is very controlled,” Liang said, as she and Becherer sat together with WKTV recently and dove deep into the exhibition Ai Weiwei at Meijer Gardens: Natural State, which is running though Aug. 20.

 

Detail “Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn” in Legos image. (Supplied)

“We only knew him, according to the Chinese media, as a person who purposely broke a very valuable antique jar. We also heard he used vulgar language, kind of insults, purposely. So, I didn’t really know too much about him. Of course, when Joe, here, talked (to us) about Ai Weiwei, as an artist, I was like ‘Wow!’”

 

And as she dug a little deeper, what Liang found was much more than simply an artist as portrayed by the Chinese media.

 

“He has this very famous family, particularly his father, Ai Ching, a very famous poet in China, and how his family suffered during the Cultural Revolution, even though his father was a very prominent and early Communist Party member,” she said. “And when we look at some of (Weiwei’s) artwork, the insults, and some of the themes, I started to understand. He is actually a social activist. That was very rare in China.”

 

‘Everything is politics’

 

Becherer, too, advocates for an understanding of the artist’s politics as well as his art — it is no coincidence that one of Ai Weiwei’s most well known sayings is “Everything is art. Everything is politics.” Blending his art and his politics is, in fact, the “natural state” of Weiwei’s world.

 

Joseph Becherer, Meijer Gardens vice president and chief curator. (WKTV)

“I think it always makes it more meaningful to know something about an artist’s biography when you are looking at their painting or their sculpture or whatever their work happens to be, because we all carry some part of us with us into whatever it is we do for a profession,” Becherer said. “With someone like Weiwei, it is probably more of an extreme, because for him art and life are inseparable.”

 

Becherer, in an essay accompanying the exhibit, states that Ai Weiwei’s art was influenced by, among others factors, his father’s life and clashes with the government, the artist’s growing up isolated from modern industrial China and being influenced by “traditions and artisan efforts of rural China,” followed by his emersion into Beijing’s late 1970s youthful avantgarde and his spending much of the 1980s in New York City before retiring to Beijing in 1993 when his father fell ill.

 

Maybe most importantly, however, Ai Weiwei’s art is influenced by increased use of social media and increased social activism — including his criticism of the Chinese government in the aftermath of the 2008’s Sichuan earthquake.

 

“In the following years,” Becherer’s essay states, “Ai Weiwei came under surveillance and was beaten, hospitalized and denied the right to travel. In 2011, he was arrested and mysteriously detained for 81 days, to the shock of the international cultural community.”

 

It was not long after that Ai Weiwei become a worldwide cause célèbre — and Becherer and Meijer Gardens began their interest and relationship with the artist as part of the the Garden’s pursuit of acquiring the massive sculpture “Iron Tree”.

 

Ai Weiwei’s “Iron Tree” has been on display for two years, but now an extensive exhibition of the artist’s works is on view. (Supplied)

“We started visiting Weiwei more than three and a half years ago, it was initially about acquiring ‘Iron Tree’,” Becherer said during the recent interview about his first meeting with the artist, who was practically under house arrest at the time. “Our process has always been that we try to engage directly with the artist. We want to understand, obviously, how the artist is living, how things come together, how things came to be. So, we began out of that, the very beginning, a sincere desire to know more about him. … It started out in one way, but it evolved and this exhibition was the result.”

 

And the exhibition is another example of Ai Weiwei’s continuing evolution.

 

“He seems to be more and more engaged in universal ideas,” Becherer said. “He seems to be more engaged with global concepts of freedom of speech and human rights. So it (his art), yes, is still related to his biography and, yes, it is related to his nationality and his heritage. But he seems to be more comfortable with the world stage.”

 

Now on the world stage

 

In July 2015, Ai Weiwei’s passport was returned and he was able to travel once again. Today, he divides his time between Beijing and Berlin, where he maintains studios.

 

It was in Berlin, in 2009, that Ai Weiwei created a massive exhibit of 9,000 children’s backpacks on the side of a building, backpacks which represented the number of children who lost their lives in the Sichuan earthquake — with colored backpacks spelling out “For seven years she lived happy on this earth,” a sentence with which a mother commemorated her daughter.

 

And the artist’s focus on social activism, and his influence both in and outside of China, has not changed according to Liang, who has more than 30 years experience in international business including extensive work in China and throughout Asia as managing director of AlphaMax Advisors LLC as well as serving on the World Affairs Council of Western Michigan. She says Ai Weiwei’s example and causes have greatly impacted her and many of her friends and business associates around the world.

 

Ping Liang, board chair of Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. (WKTV)

“Now I realize he actually inspired the birth of modern social activism in China,” Liang said. “He and his friends were so active when Sichuan earthquake took place, and the aftermath, when thousands of young children were killed. I remember seeing, on global media as well as Chinese media, the devastation, the building collapsed, and the cry of parents whose only children lost their lives in this earthquake. … Now I look back, I understand that he was trying to raise people’s awareness about what really happened. What you really need to know. This should not be kept as a secret. That is why I describe him as an inspiration for the very beginning of social awareness and activism.

 

“In terms of his impact on the world, it is huge,” she added. “When I travel around the world, everybody talks about Ai Weiwei … People realize he was actually trying to get social justice for the earthquake victims. Actually, because of that a lot of Chinese, overseas Chinese, started donating to the earthquake victims. And a lot of young people started volunteering for non-profit organizations. I thought that was just tremendous. This is the impact he has had.”

 

Ai Weiwei at Meijer Gardens: Natural State is more than 30 works including iconic works from the artist’s repertoire and work specific to Meijer Gardens located in galleries, conservatories, public spaces and the auditorium. For more information visit meijergardens.org .