Donald Judd

Donald Judd Untitled, 1972 Born 1928. Excelsior Springs. Missouri: died 1994. New York. New York Anodized aluminum 14 1 /2 x 7 6 1 /2 x 25 1 /2 inches Gift of Rose M. Shuey. from the Collection of Dr. John and Rose M. Shuey CAM 2002.17 The coolly elegant sculpture of Donald Judd has become an anchor in every significant museum collection of contemporary art. Considered the progenitor of Minimalist sculpture, he proposed a new vocabulary of non-art materials and processes that were in direct opposition to the emotive Abstract Expressionist work that he encountered in the 1950s. His education in art history and philosophy helped develop his interest in what he termed "specific objects," which gave rise to his systematic method of making pure and ordered forms. By incorporating geometric formulas to determine the physical form and utilizing plywood, Plexiglass, cast steel and extruded aluminum that were commercially fabricated, Judd reinvented conventions of beauty that were rapidly adopted by other artists. While the stacked boxes on the wall are his most widely recognized works, this ...

Kara Walker – Keys to the Coop, 1997

Kara Walker Keys to the Coop, 1997 Born 1969, Stockton. California Linoleum block print (Edition: 31 /40) 46 1/4 x 60 1/2 inches Gift of a Friend of Cranbrook Art Museum CAM 1999.13 Kara Walker's shadowy figures confront us with a disturbing legacy of racial division. Her surreal tableaux of plantation life have their genesis in historic images of the antebellum South. In this nostalgic setting, Walker re-examines the stereotypes that have long distorted race relations in America. Suggestively contoured in silhouette, a popular nineteenth-century pictorial device, her master and slave characters enact private dramas of seduction and domination, often revealing the ambiguous nature of power. The animated vignette Keys to the Coop features Walker's recurrent archetype of the exotic "pickaninny," a mischievous child with disparagingly exaggerated features. She is pictured in hot pursuit of a chicken, clutching its severed head in one hand, twirling a master key in the other. Atypically attired in a frilly dress and high-top boots, the slave girl represents a violent upset of the established social order, the fear of the retribution ...

Tony Matelli – The Hunter, 2002

Tony Matelli The Hunter, 2002 Born 1971. Chicago, Illinois: Cranbrook Academy of Art. MFA. Department of Sculpture. 1995 Silicone. artificial hair. fabric. foam. reinforced aqua resin. polyester. wire and oil paint (Edition: 3/3} 71 x 29 3/4 x 41 1/2 inches Cranbrook Centennial Acquisition. Museum Purchase with funds from George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth by exchange CAM 2003.7 Borrowing the techniques of the natural history diorama, storefront display and hyperrealist sculpture, Tony Matelli crafts a vivid approximation of the world, familiar in anecdotal detail, yet with something conspicuously awry. His lifelike figures parody human nature in its fallibility and contradictions, a theme that first emerged in poignant cast-resin vignettes portraying gestures of desperation and affection created while a student at Cranbrook Academy of Art. Matelli explores this existential frontier with an increasingly acerbic viewpoint in The Hunter, one of a trio of self-portrait caricatures from his provocative Sexual Sunrise series. In this absurd tableau, a man dressed flimsily in a red union suit gazes at the horizon in awkward anticipation, sniffing out his next ...

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray – Candelabrum, Seven Fragments, 2002-2003

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray Candelabrum, Seven Fragments, 2002-2003 Born 1962. Camden. New Jersey: Cranbrook Academy of Art. MFA. Department of Metalsmithing. 1986 Sterling silver: hollow form and repousse Fragment Seven height: 6 1/4 inches Cranbrook Centennial Acquisition. Museum Purchase with funds from George Gough Booth and Ellen Scripps Booth by exchange CAM 2003.6 Following a tradition of functional silversmithing, Myra Mimlitsch-Gray reflects upon traditional craft practice within a contemporary sculptural context. As a highly skilled technician and an intellectually alert artist, she challenges representations of social and cultural inheritances, domestic norms as well as art historical convention. Material and process as the basis of craft contribute to this work as traditional object; at the same time it is a bold contemporary response to traditional practice. Sterling silver has always been of intrinsic value, always a commodity. The melting forms of Mimli tschGray's candelabrum not only signify and incorporate the common re-smelting of silver, but also the aesthetic demands of this contemporary practitioner, bringing the past into the present. The use of sterling silver formed through traditional technique also radicalizes ...

Moon-Joo Lee

Moon-Joo Lee Landscape of Residue, 2003 Born 1972, Seoul Korea: Cranbrook Academy of Art. MFA. Department of Painting. 2003 Acrylic and photocopy on canvas 101x 91 3/4 inches (overall) Museum Committee 2003 Graduate Degree Exhibition Purchase Award through the Lila and Gilbert Silverman Acquisition Fund CA~ 2003.8 Korean-born painter Moon-Joo Lee relocated to the United States to study at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where she began to document the ubiquitous construction sites skirting Detroit and similar cities across the country. The transitory urban fabric became her compelling subject, emblematic of fluctuating socio-economic conditions and a widespread culture of uncertainty. Lee's mixedmedia painting Landscape of Residue dramatically portrays the cycle of sprawl, decay and reconstruction that perpetually transforms the American environment. In this composite image, a prefab housing complex sprouts in the distance above a mountainous terrain of cast-off street signs, tires, traffic pylons and assorted industrial refuse. Lee implicates us in the dereliction that we too often ignore, fixing our viewpoint from within the valleys of debris, the instability of which is reinforced by the fractured arrangement ...

Robert Rauschenberg – Moon Burn (Scale Series)

Robert Rauschenberg Moon Burn (Scale Series), 1977 Born 1925, Port Arthur. Texas Mixed media Combine Gift of Rose M. Shuey. from the Collection of Dr. John and Rose M. Shuey CAM 2002.34 Robert Rauschenberg combines discarded objects and mass media imagery in works that blur the boundaries between art and everyday life. Beginning in the 1950s, he eschewed the introspective approach of Abstract Expressionism in favor of cultural exploration, finding the material for his art on the streets surrounding his New York studio. By juxtaposing photographs, newspaper clippings and assorted urban detritus, Rauschenberg reflected the diverse social and economic fabric of postwar America. His revolutionary Combines and photographic montages prefigured the tactics of 1960s Pop artists. Ever the innovator, Rauschenberg also helped develop new printmaking techniques and, in collaboration with composers, choreographers and scientists, pioneered seminal forms of performance, installation and electronic art.Moon Burn is from the artist's mixed-media Scale series executed from 1977 ...

Ruth Adler Schnee – A Selection of Printed Drapery Fabrics

Ruth Adler Schnee (Designer) A Selection of Printed Drapery Fabrics (clockwise, from upper left) Semaphore, designed 1950-1951, 34 1; 4 x 51 s;a Germination, designed 1948, 34 7; s x 51 :3; 4 inch Wirewarks, designed circa 1961-1963, 32 1; 4 x 5 Backgammon, designed 1950-1951, 32 :3; 4 x 51 71 Born 1923. Frankfurt am Main. Germany: Cranbrook Academy of Art. MFA. Department of Design. 1946 Manufacturer: Adler-Schnee Associates. Detroit. Michigan Printer: Edward Schnee Cotton warp: cotton and mohair weft: screen-printed Gift of the Designer ZO 1982.22. ZO 1982.23. ZO 1982.30 and ZO 1982.35 Ruth Adler Schnee's artistic career began in Germany where she trained under family friend Paul Klee. After immigrating to the United States, Schnee studied at the Rhode Island School of Design before working with Walter Gropius at Harvard and receiving her MFA under Eliel Saarinen at Cranbrook. She next collaborated with her husband, Edward Schnee, and formed Adler-Schnee Associates, an interior design firm in Detroit that enabled Schnee to design and produce textiles and the environments that would hold them. Schnee activates ...

Wallace Mitchell – Double Pennants

Wallace Mitchell Double Pennants, 1949 Born 1911, Detroit. Michigan: Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA), Student. Department of Painting. 1934-1935: CAA Instructor. Department of Drawing and Painting, 1936-1954: CAA Secretary and Registrar. 1944-1963: Cranbrook Academy of Art Galleries, Director. 1955-1970: CAA President. 1970-1977: died 1977, Bloomfield Hills. Michigan Casein on watercolor board 20 1 /8 x 27 3/8 inches Gift of Joan and LeRoy Bence CAM 1994.60 Director of Cranbrook Academy of Art Galleries from 1955 to 1971 and president of the Academy of Art from 1970 until his death in 1977, Wallace Mitchell continued to paint as he carried out his duties as administrator. Mitchell had become deeply rooted in Cranbrook. After studying painting with Zoltan Sepeshy for a year, he was hired to teach drawing and pain ting at the Academy. While his work in the 1930s was figurative, he turned to abstract art and geometric forms in the 1940s, perhaps in part due to his friendship with Harry Bertoia, who worked with geometric forms at the same time. Mitchell's paintings gained national attention ...

Harry Bertoia – Untitled (Wall Sculpture)

Harry Bertoia Untitled (Wall Sculpture), 1958, for the Winkelman Residence, Detroit, Michigan Born 1915. San Lorenzo. Udine. Italy: Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA). Student. Silver and Metalsmithing. 1937: CAA Manager and Instructor in the Metalcraft Shop. 1937-1943: CAA Instructor of Graphic Art. 1942-1943: died 1978. Barto. Pennsylvania Bronze 41 3/4 x 63 x 9 1 /4 inches Gift of Peggy and Stanley Winkelman CAM 1984.34 With its glistening metal surfaces, shapes and shadows, this wall sculpture was commissioned in 1957 by Peggy and Stanley Winkelman, and completed in 1958, hanging near the fireplace in their Detroit home. In a letter to them, Bertoia described the work as "light and airy" and noted that he kept it on his wall "for some time and liked it very much." Bertoia taught metalwork and graphic art at Cranbrook Academy of Art before moving to California to work with Ray and Charles Eames. In 1950, he moved to Pennsylvania, working for Knoll and on his sculpture. Manipulating form, space, light, texture, color and movement, Bertoia was the most versatile ...

Toshiko Takaezu – Double-Spouted Vase

Toshiko Takaezu Double-Spouted Vase, circa 1958 Born 1922. Pepeeko. Hawaii: Cranbrook Academy of Art (CAA). Teaching Assistant. Department of Ceramics. 1953-1954: CAA MFA. Department of Ceramics. 1954 Stoneware 14 5/8 x 17 3/8 x 7 3/8 inches Gift of Eliel G. and Daniel A. Redstone in honor of Ruth R. and Louis G. Redstone (CAA Master of Architecture. 1948) CAM 2002.49 With a few deft alterations to the traditional vase farm, Toshiko Takaezu trans£ arms the function of a vase from that of holding flowers to holding its own as ceramic sculpture. Like a dividing biomorphic shape with nipple-like bumps and lush brown glazes, the work assumes a dynamic quality. In other vessel forms, such as her Moon Pot, Takaezu would finalize the transformation from utilitarian vessel to sculptural form by closing the opening altogether while retaining the beauty and power of the space-containing form. This Double-Spouted Vase is a rare creation and the last one of its kind Takaezu created in the 1950s. The body of the form and the two spouts were ...