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Articles 1 - 30 of 44
Full-Text Articles in Art and Design
The Crucified Christ, Risd Museum, Susan Ashbrook Harvey
The Crucified Christ, Risd Museum, Susan Ashbrook Harvey
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This figure of the crucified Christ was originally attached to a cross and suspended above a church altar where it was visible to all during the celebration of Mass. In this version, Christ’s body appears upright with arms outstretched, as if in resurrection, in contrast to representations that depict him sagging from suspended weight. Instead of conveying suffering, his gaze expresses acceptance. The carved sculpture was originally painted in lifelike colors, traces of which remain in the wound below Christ’s ribs. Other details are more abstract, such as the patterns of parallel incisions that define his hair and beard, and …
Annunciate Virgin, Risd Museum, Evelyn Lincoln
Annunciate Virgin, Risd Museum, Evelyn Lincoln
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This scene from the Annunciation is all that remains of a commission for the Church of Santa Margherita, the devotional center of a hospital and monastery in the Tuscan city of Prato. Its daring color and figural exaggeration are aspects of a late-Renaissance Mannerist style for which the Florentine artist Mirabello Cavalori was known. Like many candlelit altarpieces, the painting was damaged by fire, destroying the figure of the Angel Gabriel. At left, his surviving hand draws the gaze of the Virgin Mary, who is seated in a 16th-century palazzo near a balcony overlooking a mountainous landscape. Her modest but …
Utopia, Risd Museum, Neal Overstrom
Utopia, Risd Museum, Neal Overstrom
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A provocative artist associated with the YBAs (Young British Artists), Damien Hirst often employs unexpected materials that conflate art, science, and popular culture. The hundreds of butterflies mounted in paint in Utopia—with their intense colors and symmetrical, geometric composition—recall a mandala or kaleidoscope image. Butterflies are among Hirst’s most frequent motifs. With their delicacy and short life cycles, they are a metaphor for the fragility of existence that reflects the artist’s interest in fundamental questions about mortality. 2008
Portrait Of Hadrian, Risd Museum, Stephen Shaheen
Portrait Of Hadrian, Risd Museum, Stephen Shaheen
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Hadrian was emperor at the very height of the Imperial Period (117–138 CE). He was selected to rule the Roman Empire because of his personal skills rather than his ancestry. One of the most well-traveled and cosmopolitan Roman emperors, he made two journeys around the empire during his reign. He is remembered for his love of the Greek world, particularly its arts and architecture. Portraits of reigning emperors ensured that Roman citizens knew what their ruler looked like, and were widely distributed throughout the empire. This portrait of Hadrian would have been inserted into a carved bust and prominently displayed. …
Home On The Run, Risd Museum, Brian Chippendale
Saint George, Risd Museum, Sheila Bonde
Saint George, Risd Museum, Sheila Bonde
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Saint George was a soldier of the Roman Emperor Diocletian who accepted martyrdom rather than denounce his Christian faith. This carved and painted sculpture was likely to have been pulled or carried outdoors in religious processions commemorating his feast day, now celebrated on April 23. He was frequently depicted astride a horse, holding a shield and an upraised sword, symbols of both protection and sacrifice. During the Middle Ages, Saint George was the subject of widespread devotion, from Russia and Greece in the east to as far west as the British Isles. Perceived as defender of the Crusades and the …
Mies Van Der Rohe Chair, Risd Museum, Dietrich Neumann
Mies Van Der Rohe Chair, Risd Museum, Dietrich Neumann
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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe succeeded Walter Gropius as director of the Bauhaus school in 1930, after Mies had become a pioneer of Modernist metal furniture. The Bauhaus became the seat of the Modernist movement through its efforts to reconcile principles of design with the latest materials in order to mass-produce objects that were handsome, inexpensive, and easy to care for. This MR model chair, designed in 1927, is one of the 20th century’s most influential creations. The bent-steel frame was made to look like one continuous loop of metal tubing, elegantly referring to its manufacture. While Mies van der …
Untitled Film Still, Risd Museum, A. Will Brown
Untitled Film Still, Risd Museum, A. Will Brown
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When making his prints, animations, and light boxes, Ezawa looks for source images on the Internet, manipulates them, and distills them to their essentials. Untitled Film Still belongs to a series of works for which Ezawa appropriated several famous photographs in order to deal with the questions of why some images become icons and how one looks at and interprets imagery. It is a playful appropriation of Cindy Sherman’s photograph with the same title from 1978. Sherman’s seminal Untitled Film Still series was in fact single photographs in which a female character (always played by Sherman herself) is trapped in …
Child In A Red Apron (L’Enfant Au Tablier Rouge), Risd Museum, Maureen O'Brien
Child In A Red Apron (L’Enfant Au Tablier Rouge), Risd Museum, Maureen O'Brien
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This painting depicts Julie Manet, the seven-year-old daughter of the artist Berthe Morisot and her husband, Eugène Manet. She peers at a wintry landscape outside the family’s home in Paris, perhaps holding a prism to her eyes. The setting was Morisot’s bedroom, distinguished by a window whose small panes function as a compositional device that connects interior to exterior space. Across the canvas, a fluid net of slashing and spiraling marks rush through the room and animate Julie’s costume and pose. The vertical glint of a brass knob suggests that the window is ajar, introducing a breeze that lifts the …
Crucifixion, Risd Museum, Susan Ashbrook Harvey
Crucifixion, Risd Museum, Susan Ashbrook Harvey
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In this depiction of the Crucifixion, the Roman centurion Longinus is shown lancing Christ’s side as Mary faints in the arms of John the Evangelist. Beside Christ hang two thieves, one repentant, the other offering his soul to a demon. The gilded and punched surface and lavishly costumed figures reflect a late International Gothic style, here dominated by Flemish realism. Although this altar panel once hung in the parish church of El Cubo de Don Sancho in Salamanca, it likely was commissioned by a wealthy donor for a more important setting. Unpainted upper corners indicate that its original frame had …
For The Voice, Risd Museum, Doug Scott
Biblia Papuperum: The Flight Into Egypt With Jacob Fleeing Esau And David Fleeing Saul, Risd Museum, Emily Peters
Biblia Papuperum: The Flight Into Egypt With Jacob Fleeing Esau And David Fleeing Saul, Risd Museum, Emily Peters
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ca. 1460s
Chestnut Trees And Farm At Jas De Bouffan, Risd Museum, Deborah Bright, Eric Kramer
Chestnut Trees And Farm At Jas De Bouffan, Risd Museum, Deborah Bright, Eric Kramer
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The Cézanne family’s country home outside Aix-en-Provence appeared often in the artist’s work. Called Jas de Bouffan (“sheepfold of the winds”), the property consisted of an 18th-century manor house with surrounding gardens and a farm. Just out of sight of this view, beyond the farm buildings at right, loomed another favorite motif: the shimmering Montagne Sainte-Victoire. In 1881 Paul Cézanne built a studio at Jas de Bouffan and for the next eighteen years spent much of his time painting nearby landscapes. This composition features an allée of chestnut trees seen from the garden behind the house. Cézanne massed the trees …
Lucent, Risd Museum, Sebastian Ruth, Toots Zynsky
Lucent, Risd Museum, Sebastian Ruth, Toots Zynsky
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Toots Zynsky is internationally regarded as one of the most innovative figures in studio glass. Lucente is a vibrant example of her signature ‘filet de verre’ (net of glass) technique, in which she fuses thousands of intensely colored hair-thin threads of glass together on a flat surface and then allows them to slump into a bowl-shaped mold. The colors undulate and evoke feathers, flames, or woven textile designs. Zynsky’s glass-layering technique has a painterly quality unique for the medium. In Lucente, the exterior wash of green and yellow threads gives a misty appearance to the oranges and reds seen through …
Rock Head, Risd Museum, James Montford
Rock Head, Risd Museum, James Montford
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One of contemporary art’s most compelling and elusive figures, David Hammons draws upon his identity as an African American for his sculptures, performances, and installations. He was also inspired by the 1960s Italian Arte Povera (Poor Art) movement with its use of everyday materials to create metaphorical imagery. Rock Head embodies a strikingly elegant human form with remarkable simplicity, roughness, and asymmetry. Reminiscent of both archeological remains and Brancusi’s Modernist ovoid heads, the smooth boulder is thatched with hair swept up from the floor of a Harlem barbershop. Hammons began using human hair from barbershops in the 1970s for installations …
Maternity Dress, Risd Museum, Deborah Johnson, Hilary Treadwell, Judith Tannenbaum
Maternity Dress, Risd Museum, Deborah Johnson, Hilary Treadwell, Judith Tannenbaum
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1966
Sugar Bowl, Risd Museum, Caroline Frank
Lady’S Writing Table And Chair, Risd Museum, Ben Blanc, Elizabeth Williams
Lady’S Writing Table And Chair, Risd Museum, Ben Blanc, Elizabeth Williams
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Commanding as much attention now as when they debuted at the 1904 World’s Fair, this writing table and chair were conceived as showstoppers in a crowd of stunning objects made by Gorham’s competitors. More than 10,000 hours of labor, 47.5 pounds of silver, and a panoply of exotic materials make up this unique set, which deftly melds sinuous European Art Nouveau floral and figural motifs, 18th-century French Rococo forms, and traditional Hispano-Moresque designs. Intricately wrought symbolism—seen in the daytime poppies and the night owl below the mirror and the decoration of the legs, each representing one of the four seasons, …
Saucer, Risd Museum, Andrew Raftery
Elastic Armchair, Risd Museum, Alicia Valencia, Matthias Pliessnig, Rosanne Somerson
Elastic Armchair, Risd Museum, Alicia Valencia, Matthias Pliessnig, Rosanne Somerson
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Based on the ancient Greek klismos form, this chair incorporates bentwood lamination, a technique using steam to shape wood into graceful curves. Patented in 1808, Gragg’s design and construction process benefitted from his experience using this technique to make Windsor chairs, an example of which is on the right. Inspired by the proportions and lightweight construction of the Windsor chair, Gragg fused the classical past with the industrialized future. The chair is adorned with motifs that date to antiquity, such as the painted peacock feathers along the chair back, the acanthus leaves on the seat rail, and the carved hoof …
Goddess Maat, Risd Museum, Gina Borromeo, Ingrid Neuman
Goddess Maat, Risd Museum, Gina Borromeo, Ingrid Neuman
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This depiction of Maat appears to be cast in three pieces: the altar, the figure, and the feather. Smooth, highly polished surfaces contrast with the concentrated detailing of the feather, wig, broad collar, and openwork altar. The goddess embodying truth, balance, and proper action, Maat pervaded all aspects of Egyptian culture. Traditionally represented as a woman with an ostrich feather headdress, Maat here sits in a characteristic pose. Similar bronze figures of Maat suggest that this piece is incomplete, and was most likely part of a group composition in which the goddess was juxtaposed with a larger figure of the …
Valentine Portable Typewriter And Case, Risd Museum, Perry A. King, Khipra Nichols, Kate Schapira
Valentine Portable Typewriter And Case, Risd Museum, Perry A. King, Khipra Nichols, Kate Schapira
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Introduced on Valentine’s Day with a flurry of advertising, the Olivetti Company’s bright-red portable typewriter was an instant sensation of the Pop Art movement. Ettore Sottsass and Perry King designed valentine to be the “anti-machine machine,” meaning that it functioned as a typewriter but also had a humanized quality lacking in most office equipment. Sottsass noted that his seductive red typewriter was for use “in any place except an office … rather to keep amateur poets company on quiet Sundays.” To further differentiate valentine from workaday equipment, Sottsass’s early designs lacked both uppercase type and the bell signaling the end …
Nō Theater Costume (Karaori), Risd Museum, Anais Missakian, Michelle Liu Carriger
Nō Theater Costume (Karaori), Risd Museum, Anais Missakian, Michelle Liu Carriger
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18th - 19th Century
Head Of Buddha Shakyamuni, Risd Museum, Gregory Schopen, Vazira Zamindar
Head Of Buddha Shakyamuni, Risd Museum, Gregory Schopen, Vazira Zamindar
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The earliest images of Buddha are found in modern-day Pakistan at sites along ancient trade routes. The region once known as Gandhara was familiar to the Greeks as early as the fourth century BCE. Traces of their influence are visible in the classicizing features of this head of Buddha (top), combined with all the traditional attributes of Buddha—the skull protuberance, the spot or tuft of hairs between the eyebrows, and the elongated earlobes of ancient Indian nobility. The simplified and youthful facial features and the coiled knots of hair are typical of Gandharan representations. This head would probably have been …
Dress, Risd Museum, Kate Irvin, Pradeep Sharma
Dress, Risd Museum, Kate Irvin, Pradeep Sharma
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Junya Watanabe is a master of shaping and manipulating carefully chosen, often technically advanced material. This dress, designed for his Spring 2008 collection, exemplifies the designer’s keen interest in sculpting novel creations replete with historical references. Collaborating with Liberty of London, Watanabe employed yards of the English firm’s renowned Tana Lawn fabric, patterned in tribute to the Indian export textiles eagerly consumed in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. In a twist to the story of East-to-West trade, Watanabe worked with Liberty fabric produced in Japan to develop a silhouette that references the Indian dhoti, a traditional garment worn …
Man's Sash (Patka), Risd Museum, Brooks Hagan, Mallica Kumbera Landrus
Man's Sash (Patka), Risd Museum, Brooks Hagan, Mallica Kumbera Landrus
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ca. 1700-1750
Kwanseum, Risd Museum, Linda Heuman
The Hand Of God, Stephen Shaheen
The Hand Of God, Stephen Shaheen
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Rodin’s The Hand of God has been viewed not only as a metaphorical representation of the creation of man but also as a commentary on the sculptor’s role as creator. The emblematic hand that emerges from a block of roughly hewn marble represents the Divine Creator forming the bodies of Adam and Eve interlocked in a primal embrace. In contrast to the figures’ slender, attenuated limbs, the sinewy hand was perceived by critics as that of a working man. Together, the well-defined hand and the ephemeral figures bridge Rodin’s interests in both realist and symbolist art. One of three known …
Baily Risd Museum Bench, Risd Museum, Scot Bailey, Peter Walker
Baily Risd Museum Bench, Risd Museum, Scot Bailey, Peter Walker
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This bench was made as part of a graduate class to design museum seating for the ancient Greek and Roman galleries in the RISD Museum. It aims to capture the quiet character of the space, while creating a seating surface that just asks for tactile interaction. The top surface allows for a variety of seating heights and configurations, catering to the many museum visitors.The undulating seat was made by a digital process called CNC (computer numerical control). The legs, which recall an attenuated lekythos (an ancient Greek oil flask) in shape, flare out below the seat to a sharp edge …
Kopp Risd Museum Bench, Risd Museum, Andrew Kopp, Peter Walker
Kopp Risd Museum Bench, Risd Museum, Andrew Kopp, Peter Walker
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This bench in one of a pair made as result of a graduate class to design museum seating for the ancient Greek and Roman galleries in the RISD Museum. Each bench features a front seat made of bent, patinated steel that curves downward and back upward to form the back "leg." The two front legs are made of resawn ash, as is the majority of the seat. The benches were installed in the RISD Museum in October 2011. 2011