For Immediate Release
February 12, 2024
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NEW EXHIBITION AT THE CLARK EXAMINES WAYS
IN WHICH CITIES ARE PORTRAYED IN ART
Paper Cities opens at the Clark Art Institute on March 9, 2024
Williamstown, Massachusetts—Cities can take varied and fascinating forms when they become the subject of an artwork—transitioning from objective sites of study to creative expressions of places an artist has perhaps never physically experienced. When artists portray an existing city, they often highlight or conceal certain aspects in order to fashion an intentional message about that place. Paper Cities examines representations of well-known cities works on paper created between the late fifteenth and the early twentieth century. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery for Works on Paper in the Clark’s Manton Research Center from March 9 through June 23, 2024.
"It’s fascinating to explore the ways in which artists have portrayed cities over the centuries—ranging from straight documentary images to those that are romantic, moody, or fantastical. This exhibition is equal parts a historical journey back in time, a travelogue, and a wonderful opportunity to explore cities old, new, and imagined,” said Olivier Meslay, Hardymon Director of the Clark.
“In the age of social media and Google Street View, many of us can take sight of cities around the world using only our fingertips. With the only thing between us and a faraway place being a digital photograph taken by a self-driving car, rarely do we take time to consider that—until recently—images of our world were much harder to come by and shaped by another intermediary: artists,” said Allison Marino, exhibition curator and curatorial assistant for works on paper. “Paper Cities offers the chance for us to reflect on how, historically, artists’ interventions in urban views influenced how viewers thought about these places, as well as how we can be more critical consumers of city images even today.”
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
In the sixteenth century, largely in Europe, there was an emergence of a vast consumer market for images of cities, which was spurred by developments in print technology and new global discoveries. Curious consumers such as armchair travelers were able to engage with distant places from their own home through travel books and world chronicles that offered information akin to traveling the expanding world firsthand. Artists frequently copied maps, which often circulated widely as single-sheet prints, providing viewers with highly detailed visual information about international places.
As public fascination with global cities continued to grow, so did artists’ interest in depicting them. Comprising some 47 prints and photographs spanning nearly five centuries, Paper Cities examines representations of a variety of U.S. and Western European cities to explore how artists’ different approaches to showing them influenced their presentation. Artists may have endeavored to offer an objective record of defining monuments and topography. They might also have attempted to capture the character of a metropolis by including details such as figures or sites that represent larger socio-cultural ideas. Often, artists’ own relationships with the places they depicted influenced how they presented them to viewers.
THE CITY IN VIEW
Prints that featured cities as their primary subject may appear as though they were made with uncompromising objectivity. Artists, however, often portrayed cities in individualized ways by highlighting specific sites and urban characteristics, while concealing others. These artistic choices influenced how the general public interpreted these cities. Prints had the potential to inform those who had not visited a city before about its culture, customs, and inhabitants. For those who had visited, images could shape their memory of the place depicted.
Widely recognized as one of the most famous early compendiums of the known cities and towns of the world, Hartmann Schedel’s (German, 1440–1514) Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) contains a total of ninety-nine views complemented by text describing each place’s history. While many of the views are highly individualized, such as the one of Florence displayed in the exhibition, in some cases wood blocks were reused, making different cities look identical. The book had a significant print run of approximately 1,300 Latin and 600 German copies at the time it was published, reflecting the growing global curiosity among early modern consumers despite its repetitive imagery.
In Charles Henry Baskett’s (British, 1872–1953) atmospheric print of London, The City (1916), the artist plays on the viewer’s knowledge by vaguely hinting at his subject through the title as well as clues that would be easily identifiable for his audience. The protruding dome at the center of the composition is none other than St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is foregrounded by the River Thames. Baskett relies on these markers of London to create an emblematic interpretation of the city.
Throughout the centuries, Venice was a popular subject for artists. In addition to its historic role as a center for religion, art, and commerce, many artists valued Venice’s distinctive architecture and topographic profile along the sea. American artists working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903), George Charles Aid (1872–1938), and John Taylor Arms (1887–1953), were especially intrigued by how the city seemingly resisted changes brought by industrialization. As the prints included in the exhibition illustrate, these artists often showed the city in the distance, foregrounded by the sea with multiple monumental sites—notably, the Doge’s Palace, the domes of Saint Mark’s Basilica, and the Santa Maria della Salute church, as well as any number of Venice’s characteristic bell towers.
In 1925, Geoffrey Heath Wedgwood (English, 1900–1977) won the Rome Prize in Engraving, which allowed him to live and work in Rome where he produced many architectural etchings. He enlivened his prints with details specific to the socio-political environment of the 1920s and unified them with Rome’s historic architecture. In Piazza Campo dei Fiori (1926) figures remove a sign advertising Charlie Chaplin’s newest film, The Gold Rush (La febbre dell’oro), from the cinema facade. To the left, a sign references Paolo Rossi, then a prominent young criminal lawyer who would go on to become a leading political figure in the Italian Democratic Socialist Party. Looming in the background, a remnant of Rome’s Renaissance past—St. Peter’s Basilica—juxtaposes these markers of contemporary society.
Equally astonished and disoriented by the massive buildings and architecture of industrialized America, A. C. Webb (American, 1888–1975) produced numerous views of large American cities. He once wrote, “Already, certain sections are taking on a strange geometrical, inhuman aspect,” yet also that “man, creator of these mechanical monsters…. bends them to his will.” His use of flat, blocked forms in his print New York Cityscape (1931) emphasizes the scale of the newly developing style and reflects his mechanical interpretation of the architecture. Webb rarely incorporated figures in his work. Looking out over the changing city, the figure in this print signifies Webb’s paradoxical beliefs that city architecture overwhelmed humans, while remaining in their control.
THE CITY IN FOCUS
During periods of rapid change in cities, photography proved a valuable tool to record moments throughout the process. Photographers Charles Marville (French, 1816–1879) and Berenice Abbott (American, 1898–1991) witnessed the urban development of Paris and New York, respectively. In both artists’ photography, there is a tension between the old and the new where architectural markers of the past, like the Pantheon in Paris or Trinity Church in New York, compete with imminent urban changes. The second section of the exhibition features works by both artists and illustrates how Marville and Abbott capitalized on photography’s archival potential, not to resist progress, but to record these transformative moments in their cities’ histories for the years to come.
From approximately 1853 to 1870, Paris underwent a period of intense urban change after Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann was appointed by French leader Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte to modernize Paris by making the city grander and accommodating its exponentially growing population. Narrow avenues flanked by unappealing store fronts were replaced by wide, axial boulevards to make the city feel more connected and open. Yet, Bonaparte’s modernization efforts were driven by complicated political aims to usher in a new” Paris that promoted his leadership. Marville worked as an official photographer for the city to document elements of Paris before their transformation. Motivated by a strict, almost scientific purpose, Marville produced works that faithfully recorded the early city’s urban layout.
In 1929, Berenice Abbott ended an eight-year sojourn in Europe and returned to New York City. Upon her return, Abbott found the city in the midst of a post-war building boom and was awed by its transformation. Armed with her camera and a renewed personal attachment to the city, the photographer set out to document the city’s evolving landscape. Abbott’s intimate relationship with New York, cultivated by her friendships and photographic career, influenced her images, which often feature inhabitants and capture the city alive and in motion. In many of Abbott’s photographs, such as Untitled [Trinity Church, Manhattan, New York] (c. 1935, printed 1982) and New York Stock Exchange (1933, printed 1982) older architecture exists alongside new, towering skyscrapers constructed in an entirely different modern style. Their coexistence is a powerful tool that Abbott used to underscore this transitional moment in her environment.
THE CITY IN THE BACKGROUND
An artist did not need to make a city the primary focus of a composition for it to fulfill a specific narrative goal. Even when including cities as features in the background, artists used them to transport historical moments to their own era, or ground mythological or allegorical subjects to reality. Artists enhanced a given socio-political message or undertone purported by a work by anchoring specific sites in the background, especially those that were broadly recognized as political, religious, or social symbols. The objects in the third and final section of the exhibition illustrate how cities and their architectural features could still be employed in significant ways despite existing in the background.
A Street in Rouen (1884), by Maxime Lalanne (French, 1827–1886) was produced at a time when France was beginning to secularize schools and hospitals in what led up to the 1905 French law on the separation of church and state. Lalanne provides a glimpse into daily life in nineteenth-century Rouen in which the symbol of the church looms large. The viewer is pulled down a narrow street crowded with buyers purchasing cloth and other wares from vendors. The spire of the Rouen Cathedral dominates the background. It is as though the prominent cathedral symbolizes the Church’s oversight of the depicted inhabitants going about their daily lives.
German artist Max Klinger (1857–1920) addressed many social issues of his day through his art. In March Days II (1883) he expresses his anxieties about the threat of uprisings that were occurring in his homeland in 1883. This print, produced during a period of rapid industrial expansion in Germany, alludes to earlier revolutions that began in March 1848. Through his inclusion of a litfaßäule, a modern poster column, in the left foreground, Klinger anchors this perceived threat in a contemporary moment. Seen in the background to the right is the Parochialkirche, the oldest Protestant church in Berlin, which further anchors the threat in a location recognizable to viewers.
In Albrecht Dürer’s (German, 1471–1528) The Life of the Virgin: Christ Taking Leave from His Mother (1504–5), the master printmaker staged Jesus Christ’s emotional goodbye to his mother with an innovative design for a town in the background that converges architectural details from a variety of periods and regions. A pediment decorated with a classical figure and a dome that may represent the Temple of Solomon allude to the historical moment in which this biblical scene first took place, while half-timbered houses resemble what existed in the artist’s hometown of Nuremberg.
This exhibition is organized by the Clark Art Institute and curated by Allison Marino, curatorial assistant for works on paper.
Admission to the Clark is free through March 31, 2024.
RELATED EVENTS
Opening Lecture: Paper Cities
Saturday, March 16, 11 am
Auditorium, Manton Research Center
Exhibition curator Allison Marino introduces the exhibition Paper Cities. Drawing from the rich content explored in the exhibition, Marino explores how cities operated from objective subjects into creative expressions within artworks. The lecture focuses on well-known European and American cities depicted in works on paper from the late fifteenth to the early twentieth century.
Free. Accessible seats available in the Clark’s auditorium; for information, call 413 549 0524.
First Sunday Free: Paper Play
Sunday, April 7
At 2 pm, Allison Marino, curator of Paper Cities, leads a tour of the exhibition, taking participants deeper into the details of prints and photographs depicting cities. Throughout the afternoon, multidisciplinary artist Sunny Allis welcomes visitors to co-create an immersive, large-scale paper city installation in the lower level of the Clark Center that is sure to delight participants and onlookers alike.
Free admission all day. Special activities in the Conforti Pavilion and Clark Center’s lower level from 1–4 pm.
Family programs are generously supported by Allen & Company.
Social Inequality and Urban Planning
April 7, 11 am
Auditorium, Manton Research Center
How does a built environment predict social inequity? Giuseppina Forte, professor of architecture and environmental studies at Williams College, discusses her new book project, The Self-Built City: Material Politics and Ecologies of Difference in São Paulo. Her project chronicles the forces shaping urban ecologies, from self-built homes to infectious diseases, and how colonial structures solidify sites of difference. From her experience as a visiting researcher at the University of São Paulo, Forte speaks with a rich collection of oral histories and archival research.
The talk is presented as part of the programming for the Clark's Paper Cities exhibition.
Free. Accessible seats available.
Paper Cities Film Series
April 11, May 2 & May 16, 6 pm
Manton Research Center, Auditorium
All films are free. Accessible seats available.
April 11
Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927)
An emblematic “city symphony” film structured to follow the life of Berlin and its inhabitants across the course of a single day. Directed by painter Walter Ruttman, Berlin still speaks volumes about how German Expressionism crossed into every artistic medium. (Run time: 1:05)
May 2
Short Film Double Bill: Manhatta (1921) and Rien que les heures (1926)
A “city symphony” directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand, Manhatta is considered the first American avant-garde film. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poem “Mannahatta,” the film portrays life in New York City in sixty-five shots from extreme camera angles that capture the dynamic new metropolis. Rien que les heures was Alberto Cavalcanti’s first film as a director. It documents the life of Paris from dawn until dusk, including the beautiful and the ragged, the rich and the poor. (Manhatta run time: 10 minutes, Rien que les heures run time: 45 minutes)
May 16
Short Film Triple Bill: À propos de Nice (1930); Douro, Faina Fluvial (1931); and Regen/Rain (1931)
Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice exposes the seedier side of life on the French Riviera, contrasting the labor of low-paid workers with the idle tourists as the city prepares for Carnival. Manoel de Oliveira’s first film, Douro, Faina Fluvial, combines a poetic portrait of the Portuguese urban poor making a living on the Douro River with rigorously geometric shots of the built environment. Regen/Rain was shot during one rainstorm in Amsterdam. The precise rhythm of the editing echoes the beat of the falling rain as director Joris Ivens’ carefully composed images exploit the slick textures and reflections created by the water. (À propos de Nice run time: 25 minutes; Douro, Faina Fluvial run time: 21 minutes; Regen/Rain run time: 12 minutes)
ABOUT THE CLARK
The Clark Art Institute, located in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, is one of a small number of institutions globally that is both an art museum and a center for research, critical discussion, and higher education in the visual arts. Opened in 1955, the Clark houses exceptional European and American paintings and sculpture, extensive collections of master prints and drawings, English silver, and early photography. Acting as convener through its Research and Academic Program, the Clark gathers an international community of scholars to participate in a lively program of conferences, colloquia, and workshops on topics of vital importance to the visual arts. The Clark library, consisting of some 300,000 volumes, is one of the nation’s premier art history libraries. The Clark also houses and co-sponsors the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art.
The Clark, which has a three-star rating in the Michelin Green Guide, is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Its 140-acre campus includes miles of hiking and walking trails through woodlands and meadows, providing an exceptional experience of art in nature. Galleries are open 10 am to 5 pm Tuesday through Sunday, from September through June, and daily in July and August. Admission is free January through March and is $20 from April through December; admission is free year-round for Clark members, all visitors age 21 and under, and students with a valid student ID. Free admission is also available through several programs, including First Sundays Free; a local library pass program; and the EBT Card to Culture. For information on these programs and more, visit clarkart.edu or call 413 458 2303.
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