| Guest Curator: Lisa
Melandri, Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs, Santa
Monica Museum of Art
The Goldie Paley Gallery is pleased to present
“Mary Cassatt, Alice Neel, Karen Kilimnik: Painted Faces,”
an exhibition that explores the relationship between three Philadelphia
artists from three succeeding generations: Mary Cassatt (1844–1926),
Alice Neel (1900–1984), and Karen Kilimnik (b. 1955). Each
has been recognized not only as a fine portraitist but also as
an artist who has, through portraiture, captured the “Painting
of Modern Life.”
The three native Pennsylvanians have focused
their talents on recording their lives and times; their production
is inextricably linked to their respective generations. Neel strips
bare the soul of her sitters; from members of her family to a
dazzling array of mid-twentieth-century New York literati. Whether
subjects of fame or obscurity, from Andy Warhol to her daughter-in-law,
Neel’s works offer neither false beauty nor pomp, but truth
and familiarity. Cassatt’s paintings give the nineteenth-century
French middle class a simple grandeur. Often engaged in everyday
activities and in moments of quiet intimacy, her sitters are given
an iconic stature. Kilimnik’s works are also iconic, but
her subjects are often the opposite of Cassatt’s—they
are true icons of popular culture. Her paintings and drawings
rely on such celebrities of the moment as Leonardo di Caprio;
they read like a fan’s journal of adulation, but are produced
with a stylistic and compositional relationship to the wan, clean
lines of Cassatt’s prints. Kilimnik plays with the ability
of portraiture to alternately mask and reveal, and with the representation
of a face as a locus for obsession and as a site for tribute and
homage. Whether these women look into their own social circles
or outward to the famous, portraiture remains the vehicle by which
they have described society and humanity’s struggles, joys,
pains, and aspirations.
The Galleries at Moore College are an ideal
venue for this exhibition as it highlights the contribution of
important women artists both past and present, reexamines and
reframes the work of these artists, and gives the Philadelphia
community a chance to investigate both the historical and cutting-edge
art of the city.
“Painted Faces” fosters inquiry into
art history and criticism on many levels: it surveys artistic
tradition and influence in Philadelphia over several generations;
it investigates the fluid definition of portraiture; it charts
changing representations of popular culture and modern life; and
it underscores the persistence of the figural in artistic production
(in times when portraiture has been more and less accepted as
important high art); and the allusive capacity of the individual
portrait to portray the human condition.
Special Events
Picture This Family Workshop
Saturday, January 26
10 am –12 noon
Led by Philadelphia artists John Stone and Lonnie Graham. Children
6 to 14 and their caregivers will use Polaroids, picture frames,
and their own family snapshots and talismans to create self-portraits
that celebrate ancestral heritage.
Moore Atrium. Admission $2. Reservations required. Tel: 215-965-4048
REPRESENT
Friday, February 8
7 – 10 pm
An evening of poetry and self-expression, hosted by the Galleries
at Moore and organized by Stephanie Renée, education director
and Living Word curator at the Painted Bride Art Center.
Moore Auditorium. Admission free.
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