Varujan Boghosian | |
---|---|
Born | Varujan Yegan Boghosian 1926 |
Died | September 21, 2020 (aged 94) |
Nationality | American |
Known for | Assemblage, Collage, Sculpture |
Movement | Surrealism |
Varujan Yegan Boghosian (1926 New Britain, Connecticut - September 21, 2020) was an American artist, best known for his sculptures and assemblages. During his career, he held teaching positions at the University of Florida, Cooper Union, Pratt Institute, Yale University, Brown University and Dartmouth College. At Dartmouth, Boghosian was a member of the art faculty from 1968 to 1995. He was awarded an endowed position as the George Frederick Jewett Professor of Art in 1982. Boghosian retired from Dartmouth in 1995 and had since continued his work as a practicing artist up until his death. He was survived by his only daughter, Heidi Boghosian, a lawyer, author and activist [1] [2]
The son of Armenian immigrants, Boghosian was born and raised in New Britain, Connecticut. His father was a cobbler who later worked for Stanley Tools (now Stanley Black & Decker). Boghosian's early schooling was traditional although he benefited from classes taught by the poet Constance Carrier, who introduced him to the world of literature.
Boghosian served in the U.S. Navy, during World War II. Returning to the U.S in 1946 he was able to attend college on the G.I. Bill.
Boghosian was then invited by Josef Albers to attend Yale University (1956–59), along with Irving Petlin, Boghosian had already received a number of accolades as well as a Fulbright Grant for Painting in Italy (1953) and in 1966, he was artist in residence at the American Academy in Rome. [3] He was a 1985 Guggenheim fellow. [4] He taught at The Cooper Union (1959–64), Yale University (1962–64), Brown and Dartmouth College (1968–96).
Boghosian showed with the legendary Stable Gallery, founded by Eleanor Ward, consistently between 1963 and 1966. At this time, the Stable Gallery showcased various young and emerging artists including: Joseph Cornell, Alex Katz, Marisol Escobar, Joan Mitchell, Isamu Noguchi, Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Larry Rivers as well as Andy Warhol's first one-man show. The unorthodox and experimental spirit of this time has remained with Boghosian and informed his developing relationship with the appropriation of everyday objects and their subsequent plastic manipulations.
In 1968, Boghosian began to exhibit with the historic Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery, Duchamp's dealer in America. It was an ideal fit for Boghosian, as Arne Ekstrom's distinctive style favored the union of art and literature. Cordier & Ekstrom put on far-reaching shows that gave the same attention to world-renowned artists as it did to those who were just emerging. Morris Louis and Isamu Noguchi were some of the artists who frequented the gallery and it was where Romare Bearden honed his style. The gallery's circulating exhibition roster included such prominent names as Dubuffet, Matisse, Saul Steinberg, and Magritte. Boghosian developed a long-standing relationship with Arne Ekstrom and exhibited with the gallery well into the late 1980s. [5]
Boghosian's art drew inspiration from a variety of sources including literature, art, history and music. Allusions to myth and poetry pervade his work. Explorations of the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice, for instance, were a central and continuous theme throughout his career. Closely linked to this fascination with classical myth is Boghosian's recurring use of symbols such as swans and serpents, both of which are rooted in a strong tradition of cross-cultural mythology.
Building upon the traditions of Surrealism and Dada Boghosian's assemblages and collages playfully contemplate the boundaries between dream and reality. In creating his art, Boghosian drew heavily on his extensive personal archive of found objects, gathered together in his home and studio. The images and objects that he utilized often bore the mark of time and his creations frequently juxtapose groups of seemingly unrelated objects together. In describing his artistic process, Boghosian is quoted as saying "I don't make anything. I find everything.”[ citation needed ]
Boghosian's work began to be included in the thematic exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Art Institute of Chicago as early as 1954. He has also received numerous grants including a Fulbright, a Guggenheim Fellowship (1985), [6] and residency at the American Academy in Rome with Philip Guston, and he has been an active member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1968, and a National Academician of The National Academy of Design.
Beginning with the Swetzoff Gallery, Boston (1950–65), Boghosian has been actively exhibiting with over 75 one-man exhibitions including the Arts Club of Chicago (1970), The American Academy in Rome (1986), the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (1988), the Norton Gallery of Art (1992), the Hood Art Museum, Dartmouth (1989), the Toledo Museum of Art (2013), and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2018).
His work is in the public collections of Brooklyn Museum; University Art Museum of the University of California Berkeley; Indianapolis Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art; New York Public Library; Whitney Museum of American Art; and the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, among many others. Notable retrospectives include a 1989 exhibition at the Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College and a 2013 exhibition at the Toledo Museum of Art.
His papers are held at the Archives of American Art. [7]
Romare Bearden was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from New York University in 1935.
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was a primary pioneer of the Dada movement and Surrealism in Europe. He had no formal artistic training, but his experimental attitude toward the making of art resulted in his invention of frottage—a technique that uses pencil rubbings of textured objects and relief surfaces to create images—and grattage, an analogous technique in which paint is scraped across canvas to reveal the imprints of the objects placed beneath. Ernst is noted for his unconventional drawing methods as well as for creating novels and pamphlets using the method of collages. He served as a soldier for four years during World War I, and this experience left him shocked, traumatised and critical of the modern world. During World War II he was designated an "undesirable foreigner" while living in France.
Isamu Noguchi was an American artist, furniture designer and landscape architect whose career spanned six decades from the 1920s. Known for his sculpture and public artworks, Noguchi also designed stage sets for various Martha Graham productions, and several mass-produced lamps and furniture pieces, some of which are still manufactured and sold.
Adolph Friedrich Reinhardt was an abstract painter and Art theorist active in New York City for more than three decades. As a theorist he wrote and lectured extensively on art and was a major influence on conceptual art, minimal art and monochrome painting.
Raymond Saunders is an American artist known for his multimedia paintings which often have sociopolitical undertones, and which incorporate assemblage, drawing, collage and found text. Saunders is also recognized for his installation, sculpture, and curatorial work.
Conrad Marca-Relli was an American artist who belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognized across the Atlantic, including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism, represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, John Ferren, Marca-Relli and others became a leading art movement of the postwar era.
Kenzo Okada was a Japanese-born American painter and the first Japanese-American artist working in the Abstract Expressionist style to receive international acclaim. At the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, Okada’s work was exhibited in the Japan Pavilion and he won the Astorre Meyer Prize and UNESCO Prize.
Arts Club of Chicago is a private club and public exhibition space located in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, a block east of the Magnificent Mile, that exhibits international contemporary art. It was founded in 1916, inspired by the success of the Art Institute of Chicago's handling of the Armory Show. Its founding was viewed as a statement that art had become an important component of civilized urban life. The Arts Club is said to have been pro-Modernist from its founding. The Club strove to break new ground with its shows, rather than collect the works of established artists as the Art Institute does.
Herbert Ferber was an American Abstract Expressionist, sculptor and painter, and a "driving force of the New York School."
Yokohama Museum of Art, founded in 1989, is located in the futuristic Minato Mirai 21 district of the Japanese city Yokohama, next to the Yokohama Landmark Tower.
The Stable Gallery, originally located on West 58th Street in New York City, was founded in 1953 by Eleanor Ward. The Stable Gallery hosted early solo New York exhibitions for artists including Marisol Escobar, Robert Indiana and Andy Warhol.
Sinai is a public artwork by the Japanese American artist Isamu Noguchi, located at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, which is near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. Sinai is a cast-iron sculpture measuring 36 inches (910 mm) high, 21 inches (530 mm) wide, and 11 inches (280 mm) deep. It is part of a series of work created between the 1967 and 1969, during which time Noguchi was collaborating with the Japanese stone carver Masatoshi Izumi.
Modern sculpture is generally considered to have begun with the work of Auguste Rodin, who is seen as the progenitor of modern sculpture. While Rodin did not set out to rebel against the past, he created a new way of building his works. He "dissolved the hard outline of contemporary Neo-Greek academicism, and thereby created a vital synthesis of opacity and transparency, volume and void". Along with a few other artists in the late 19th century who experimented with new artistic visions in sculpture like Edgar Degas and Paul Gauguin, Rodin invented a radical new approach in the creation of sculpture. Modern sculpture, along with all modern art, "arose as part of Western society's attempt to come to terms with the urban, industrial and secular society that emerged during the nineteenth century".
Danh Võ is a contemporary artist of Vietnamese descent. He lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City.
Saburō Hasegawa was a Japanese-born American calligrapher, painter, art writer, curator, and teacher. He was an early advocate of abstract art in Japan and an equally vocal supporter of the Japanese traditional arts and Zen Buddhism. Throughout his career he argued for the connection between East Asian classical arts and Western abstract painting.
Ahron Ben-Shmuel, also known as Ben Shmuel, Aaron Ben Shmuel (1903–1984) was an American artist, known for his direct carvered stone sculptures, figural granite work and paintings. He worked for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and he was associated with left-wing politics despite his art having no clear political references.
Death is a statue by Isamu Noguchi, depicting a dead body of a person who had been lynched, inspired by the 1930 lynching of George Hughes in Texas. The almost life-sized statue was exhibited at one of two 1935 New York anti-lynching exhibitions, where its bad and overtly racist reception caused its creator to change career direction.
Ansei Uchima was an American artist and teacher primarily known as a sōsaku-hanga woodblock printmaker who employed traditional ukiyo-e Japanese techniques to produce abstract works covering a range of distinct personal styles.
Toshiko Uchima was a Japanese-American artist. She worked in a variety of media, including collage, box assemblage, oil paintings, woodblock prints and drawings.
Bonnie Rychlak is an American artist, curator, and writer. She is known for her wax sculptures representing functional urban forms and actions of evacuation and for her practice of carving, casting wax, and melting it into fabric. Influenced by the work of Eva Hesse and the encaustic paintings of Brice Marden and Jasper Johns, she employs wax as a medium for sculpture in its own right rather than simply as a transition to being cast in bronze. Her work has been featured in various solo and group exhibitions and is included in collections in the United States, Europe and Asia.