Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) was one of the best-known artists of the middle and later 20th century. Known for his intensely realist style, he exhibited an extraordinary technical mastery of several different media. Over his long career he explored a wide variety of themes, concentrating primarily on the land and people around his beloved homes in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and Cushing, Maine, and revealing diverse emotional levels that give his work an authentic and expressive American voice. Underlying his realist approach is a strong compositional sense of formal relationships and a prototypical use of contrasting light and shadow to help build depth of space and mood. Many of his works have become iconic, including one of the most well-known images in 20th century art, Christina’s World in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

This selection from the museum’s permanent collection is a broad examination of geometric abstract paintings, sculptures and prints from the 1960s and 1970s, a period known for its purity of style. Approximately 100 works represent a variety of ideas in Optical Art, Kinetic art, Minimalism, Hard-Edge and Color- Field. Many of the exhibited works, impressive in their sheer visual power, have rarely been on view or are on view for the first time.

During the turn of the twentieth century, two distinct currents in European art may be identified. The first were artists who upheld a fading classical tradition. They promoted representational art that was based on the academic study of the figure, landscape and still life. The other group was the forerunners of what is generally termed Modern Art. They expressed freedom and independence from established styles and explored new ways to use color and the concept of purely abstract painting.

Reopening with new selections October 18, 2011

Combining traditional and contemporary artworks from the 19th-century to today, this installation presents a complex blend of cultures, landscapes, historical forces and artistic traditions that both inform and challenge our ever evolving notion of the West. The apparent intersecting and blending of influences of different cultures—Euro-American and Native American cultures—was an integral part of the expansion of the western frontier and forms an important part of our artistic heritage. Paintings by Thomas Moran, Charles Russell, Agnes Pelton, James Swinnerton and George Montgomery are featured with contemporary artworks by Alexis Smith, Fritz Scholder and Dan Namingha along with traditional forms of Native American basketry, pottery and textiles including works by Cahuilla basket artists Lupe Allberras and Dolores Saneva Patencio among others.

MARILYN AND BRUCE THROCKMORTON GALLERY (mezzanine level) AND VIDEO PROJECTS ROOM (McCallum Wing)

Lewis deSoto’s exhibition project, Ransom, utilizes the Mesoamerican collection at the Palm Springs Art Museum, commissioned videos, and historical sculptural elements to create a multi-nuanced environment that presents the dynamic relationship between victor and vanquished. On view concurrently with Comic Art Indigène, another exhibition addressing indigenous cultural themes, the project references Hernando de Soto’s defeat of the Incan empire in Peru under Francisco Pizarro’s command.

Comic art is now mainstream. It is a source for award-winning fiction, highly-budgeted motion pictures, and endless streams of merchandising such as toys and video games. Yet comic book art remains an enigma, its most popular genre has always been directed towards a young audience hindering its growth and acceptance among artists and critics.

For more than 40 years, John Baldessari has been a mainstay of the Southern California art scene and a key contributor to national and international explorations of conceptual art in its many idioms, whether linguistic, performance-based, or photo and object-based. An underlying theme in his art has been the questioning of perceptual experience – how we see, interpret, and understand the world around us – and how this experience can dislocate preconceived notions and challenge conventional thinking.

Donald Wexler practiced architecture during what he calls the “golden age” of California architecture from the immediate postwar years through the 1970s. This was a time when architects enjoyed considerable freedom to employ new materials and technologies in their search for functionally beautiful architecture.

Richard Avedon (1923-2004) set new precedents in fashion and portraiture for nearly seven decades. This exhibition of approximately 90 black and white photographs explores Avedon’s use of the camera to create images that helped to define fashion, theater, and movies as interrelated worlds that shared a similar visual vocabulary. His interest in performance began in the 1940s and 1950s with his early photographs of leading models in designer clothing for magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. Taking his models out of the studio, Avedon combined the sophistication and glamour of haute couture with the excitement of modern life he celebrated in the streets of Paris, Rome, and New York.

Modernism in art is recognized as a time of unprecedented stylistic growth and change. Artists in the first decades of the twentieth century broke away from academic traditions and embraced a new approach to sculptural form and line drawing. Drawing and working spontaneously on paper and with print-making techniques took on a new urgency as artists worked out their methods freely. In sculpture, artists sought freedom from the constrictions of the past by employing non-traditional materials and exploring bold, abstract forms.

A comparative view of the American West from 1866 to the present, this exhibition examines the role of photography in popularizing divergent ideas and documenting changing visions of the West. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the West has stood out as a destination and center for photographic activity. Spectacular vistas combined with unique land formations and bright, clear light attracted early photographers, who recorded the natural beauty of the West for the enjoyment of local and East coast audiences. Beginning in the mid-nineteenth century, Carleton Watkins, famous for his large format photographs, created images of the majestic views of Yosemite. This appeal for images of wonder and exploration influenced a second generation of twentieth-century landscape photographers, predisposing them to the notion of the West as a sublime and spiritual “Garden of Eden.”

Sven Birger Sandzén (1871-1954), a Swedish-born artist, trained in Paris and participated in its famous fin de siècle milieu. In 1894 he immigrated to the United States and settled in the center of the American prairie in Lindsborg, Kansas where he was invited to become an art professor at Bethany College. Considered a post-Impressionist for his use of color and expressionist in technique, Sandzén vibrant and dynamic paintings of prairie and western landscapes from Kansas to the California coast have been relatively unknown outside the Midwest until recently.

This exhibition of the work of one of America’s most significant Modernist architects is the first comprehensive overview of John Lautner’s architecture. It includes 115 original drawings and sketches; ten original models; six large-scale architectural models created for the exhibition and a documentary film.

Imagery and technique are intimately linked in Connor's work. The photographer has always gravitated towards images that reveal "the essence of something, the apparition of a form or idea, rather than a particular fact." A large-format view camera allows her to achieve remarkable clarity; frequently using long exposures, the images can also present time and movement. Her prints are created by direct contact of the 8x10-inch negative onto printing-out paper, the image exposed and developed in her garden using sunlight. She then tones the prints with gold chloride. The results are extremely rich in detail and have a warmth and delicacy seldom found in standard photographic printing.

This exhibition, a comprehensive forty-year retrospective of Tagliapietra's art and career, documents and celebrates his remarkable achievements as a contemporary artist. The exhibition includes 169 art works that range from a room-size installation of his impressive Endeavor boat series, to groupings of masterful goblets, to elegant and evocative sculptural forms. Tagliapietra is widely revered as the master of glassblowing, an inspiring teacher and the elder statesman who is credited with shaping the course of international Studio Glass.

This exhibition features the gifts and promised works from Donna and Cargill MacMillan, Jr., who have been building a personal collection of the art of their time for more than 20 years. The exhibition features more than 75 contemporary sculptures, paintings, design objects, and works on paper from the era’s most well known and art historically significant artists. It will inaugurate newly designed galleries in the Steve Chase Wing, which completes the museum’s dramatic changes following three years of transformative renovations.

This select group of outstanding Impressionist and Modern paintings on loan from a private collection demonstrates how artists from the late 19th to late 20th century were willing and driven to experiment with both content and materials. It represents Impressionist forays into the nature and effects of light and atmosphere, which are translated as pigment on canvas; Post Impressionist amplifications of emotion and expression through vivid color; and mid-20th-century abstractions animated by hue and gesture.

The Palm Springs Art Museum recently received three major photography gifts that have brought national attention to our growing collection. Some of the most stunning works from these gifts have been organized into this exhibition, which features compelling works from post-World War II American photography. The three collectors who have donated these significant photographs are Patricia and Patrick Kennedy, Jeanne and Dan Fauci, and Pamela and Joe Bonino.

The Palm Springs Art Museum is fortunate to have in its permanent collection significant works by major California, national and international artists. Represented in this exhibition are prints, paintings and sculptures created using a variety of traditional and non-traditional materials and methods ranging in scale from the diminutive to the grand. A number of issues relating to the creative process, abstraction versus representation and an exploration of the individual’s place in the cosmos connect this diverse body of works and offer the viewer a variety of possibilities for multi-leveled interaction and interpretation. Major works by Helen Frankenthaler, Soonja Oh Kim, Ed Ruscha, Sam Francis, Helen Lundeberg, Lita Albuquerque, Debra Butterfield and others are featured.

A survey of more than one hundred works drawn from this great American artist’s lengthy career. Thiebaud (born 1920) has long been a mainstay of California’s cultural and artistic communities. Since the early 1960s, he has shaped a personal artistic vision that embraces different subjects and stylistic variations but is always characterized by his blending of realism and abstraction, a penchant for dazzling light and high-keyed color, and a gift for painterly, sensuous handling of oils and pastels. Best known for his still life compositions of bakery goods and delicatessen counters with their distinctive brand of nostalgic Americana, he also has specialized in large-scale portraits, studies of Northern California landscape, and cityscapes featuring San Francisco’s vertiginous geometry of nearly-vertical streets and sidewalks.

The kinds of subjects of the images of the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) ranged from portraits to still lifes, from classical sculptures to contemporary nudes, some of which were overtly sexual and made him at least temporarily notorious. His most lasting legacy, however, and by far the largest portion of his considerable photographic output, is his portraiture which reflects and embodies the New York cultural milieu of the late 1970s and the 1980s. Within his roster of clients can be found a pantheon of many of the most significant artists, art dealers, writers, musicians, designers, dealers, actors and actresses of the period as well as a host of ancillary figures.

This exhibition, specifically organized for the Palm Springs Art Museum and personally curated by Mark Coetzee, Rubell Family Collection director, is the first of other future collaborations between the two museums involving a range of initiatives featuring exhibitions drawn from the rich holdings of the Rubell Family Collection. 

Born on a ranch near Fresno, California, Maynard Dixon (1875-1946) became a noted illustrator, landscape artist and mural painter of the early 20^th-century American West. His favored subjects included landscapes (especially the desert), Indians, early settlers and cowboys. Influenced by modernism, he developed a unique style of painting bold masses of color with simple lines which led him into mural painting where he excelled much of his professional life

"A world of cultural hybrids and collisions" animates the work of Mexican-born San Francisco artist Enrique Chagoya, who taps Mexico's complex history, international politics, world religions and popular culture in his art. A single work incorporates a diverse selection of visual material from various cultures and time periods. Contemporary icons like Mickey Mouse, Superman, Wonder Woman, Che Guevara, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush may intermingle with more ancient figures, such as the Aztec god Mictlantecutli, Buddha, and the Virgin of Guadalupe among other religious icons in fantastic compositions. In his lively work, Chagoya also pays homage to history's other socially engaged artists, such as Honore Daumier, Francisco Goya, Jose Guadalupe Posada, John Heartfield and Philip Guston.

Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) came to America in 1913 from Hungary. During Muray's forty-five year career as a New York photographer, he developed a growing reputation that began during the decade of the 1920s when he photographed notable figures from high society. At the time of his death, most Americans had seen, at one time or another, Muray's portraits of celebrities, presidents, or advertisements that were regularly featured in Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair, McCall's and the Ladies Home Journal.

One glance at the vigorous brushwork and spirited color exhibited inGround (1989-90), and the viewer is drawn in; seduced by the sheer joyof creation which Joan Mitchell must surely have been experiencing;seduced by the colors, textures and movement of the materials. Much ofour response to great works of art is intimately tied to the inherentqualities of the materials an artist chooses coupled with the energyand talent required to create them. 

Hall's paintings are inspired by the artist's visits to Palm Springs' pools and resorts and Los Angeles' posh Westside and beaches. Depictions of privileged, beautiful women grinning with self-satisfaction against the inevitable ravages of time became the basis of Hall's imagery. Employing a realist style of painting, the artist celebrates the color and quality of light in sunny environments. Yet, these emotionally charged works pack compelling thoughts for viewers who choose to look beyond the pretty faces and scenes. Beneath the surface beauty lurks a certain "edge" evoking an uneasy feeling that something is amiss. In revealing herself through these poignant and personal images, the artist lures us into deeper consideration of our own yearnings for eternal youth and our inability to face what inevitably comes with human mortality.

No single person has been a more definitive witness to the evolution of modern architecture in Southern California than the great photographer Julius Shulman. Shulman was not only present; he was, in fact, the narrator of this saga, telling the story to the world through his photographic documentation.  Sensitive to light, structure and detail, Shulman captured the essential elements of the buildings he was shooting with beauty and masterful illustrative ability. His dazzling photographic work turned buildings into icons, giving us both an aesthetic and an historical record.

The human form has been a source of inspiration for artists of every era and geographic area. Over time, images and representations of human figures have referred to every day, ordinary people and gods and goddesses alike. In the case of ancient Mesoamerican figures, the distinctions between the two are sometimes unclear. The ancient American artwork in this exhibition was produced for funerary purposes meant to be buried in high-ranking rulers’ tombs and includes what have been interpreted as warriors, musicians and shamanic figures.

The exhibition of modern sculptures from the famed Weiner collection includes major works by Arp, Calder, Lipchitz, Marini, Modigliani, Moore, Noguchi, Picasso, Schuler, Zajac and other significant sculptors of the 20th century. On extended loan from Gwendolyn Weiner, the art was inherited from her parents Ted and Lucille Weiner who had residences in Palm Springs and Fort Worth, Texas. The modern sculpture collection demonstrates the collectors' strong and fine-tuned sense of personal preferences and fascination with the sculptural forms. The collection has been on extended loan to the Palm Springs Art Museum since 1970 with sculptures donated by Gwendolyn Weiner over the years.

Viola uses the communications media to create art that is direct and profound. In The Crossing, Viola has placed a large projection screen in the center of a darkened gallery. On both sides of this screen, a human form approaches the viewer from a deep distance. Once this figure of a man stops, the two natural elements of fire and water begin to appear on the screen. On one side, a small flame licks at the figure's feet, and on the other a small stream begins to drip and then pour on the figure's head.

The desert landscape has lured painters and photographers throughout the 20th century. Initially attracted to the mild winters, intense sunlight and changing landscape, artists captured the desert environment with a variety of perspectives. This exhibition presents artistic visions and expressions from majestic vistas to changed landscapes. By comparing pristine, uninhabited desert views in the first half of the century to the surrealist, inhabited scenes eroded by time and deterioration in the latter part of the century, the viewer is invited to contemplate the distinction between reality, the altered landscape and the impact of human presence on the land.

McLaughlin, a southern California artist, developed a distinctive style of abstraction referred to as "geometric Western abstraction." Inspired by his lifelong study of the art of Asia, he instilled in his art an Eastern sense of stillness and quietude. While he is often compared to Minimalists, McLaughlin belongs to an earlier generation as he developed his mature style of simplified geometric forms by 1948 - a decade before the emergence of Minimalism.

From cowboys and Indians to landscapes and man-made environments, images of the American West are tangled in myth and reality. A variety of themes organized by subject matter and visual relationships invite visitors to forget about historic periods and styles and look at art in new ways. Fans of classic Western and Native American art can view these works alongside contemporary works.