“If you’re a painter, you’re not alone. There’s no way to be alone.”

Franz Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter, mainly associated with the abstract expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s, and best known for large black and white paintings bearing abstract motifs set down with strident confidence. He started out as a realist with a fluent style that he perfected during an academic training that encouraged him to admire Old Masters such as Rembrandt. But after settling in New York and meeting Willem de Kooning, he began to evolve his signature abstract approach. By the end of his life he had achieved immense international recognition, and his unusual approach to gestural abstraction was beginning to influence the ideas of many Minimalists.

In honor of his birthday, why not pay a visit to Kline’s “Untitled” painting in the Modern & Contemporary Gallery on UMMA’s Mezzanine level? The Museum is open until 5pm, and admission is always free!

• Image: Untitled, Franz Kline, 1961, oil on cardboard mounted on board. University of Michigan Museum of Art; Bequest of W. Hawkins Ferry, 1988/1.136

Mary Cassatt (May 22, 1844 - June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She lived much of her adult life in France, where she first befriended Edgar Degas and later exhibited among the Impressionists. Cassatt often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children.

Fun facts:

• After 1914 she was forced to stop painting as she became almost blind. Nonetheless, she took up the cause of women’s suffrage, and in 1915, she showed eighteen works in an exhibition supporting the movement.
• The SS Mary Cassatt was a World War II Liberty ship, launched May 16, 1943.
• To date, six of her paintings have been reproduced on US postage stamps.
• On May 22, 2009, she was honored by a Google logo in recognition of her birthday.

Image: Mary Cassatt, Jeannette Wearing a Bonnett. drypoint on cream laid paper. University of Michigan Museum of Art; Gift of Ruth W. and Clarence J. Boldt, Jr., 2008/2.423

Maria Sol Escobar (born May 22, 1930), otherwise known as Marisol, is a sculptor born in Paris of Venezuelan lineage.

A mover and shaker in the Pop Art movement, Marisol achieved an authentically individualistic style by channeling her talents through the art of assemblage, a form of integrated mixed media, for which she gained wide recognition in the 1960s. Her work is largely inspired by the earthy representations of people and animals from pre-Columbian sculpture and South American folk art.

Her art is characterized by whimsical paint application and the humorous placement of found objects like the staring doll’s eyes set in the skull of her carved two-foot tall cat. One art critic observed that “her art is that of the toy-maker, whose creations are specifically designed to appeal to that part of the mind in which fantasy and reality seem identical.”

Marisol lives in the TriBeCa neighborhood of New York City and continues to work on new pieces. Her newest compositions tend to be, compared to her previous works, of a smaller scale but remain impressive and particular. Click here to learn more about Marisol, and here to see more of her work.

Images:

Top: Portrait for LIFE Magazine, December 1957, Photographer: Walter Sanders 

Center: Marisol, Women and Dog, 1964. Wood, plaster, synthetic polymer, taxidermic dog head, and miscellaneous items, dimensions variable. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase with funds from the Friends of the Whitney Museum of American Art  64.17a-g

Bottom: Marisol, Fingers and Faces, 1961. lithograph. University of Michigan Museum of Art; Gift of the Marvin Felheim Collection, 1983/1.331

“It is often said that my heart is too open for my own good.”

Henri Rousseau (May 21, 1844 – September 2, 1910) was a French Post-Impressionist painter who employed a highly personal method of working, gathering the elements for his paintings from numerous sources: engravings in illustrated magazines, paintings, photographs, and advertising catalogues. Ridiculed during his lifetime, he came to be recognized as a self-taught genius whose works are of high artistic quality. 

Albrecht Dürer (May 21, 1471 – April 6, 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theorist from Nuremberg. His watercolours mark him as one of the first European landscape artists, while his ambitious woodcuts revolutionized the potential of that medium. Durer’s introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions. Click here to learn and see more.

• Image: The Four Avenging Angels from the ‘Apocalypse’ by Albrecht Dürer, 1496-1498, woodcut print, Gift of the Friends of the Museum of Art in honor of Bret Waller, 1980/1.214

Today marks the 62nd anniversary of the ground-breaking 9th Street Art Exhibition (May 21-June 10 1951). 

Installation view of the Ninth Street show, 1951

Representative of New Art in the 20th Century, the Ninth Street Show was the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde artists collectively known as the New York School.

Click below to watch a video from 2010 of several participating artists reflecting on the exhibition.

Media City is an annual international festival of film and video art presented in Windsor, Ontario and Detroit, Michigan since 1994.

Each year the festival attracts filmmakers and audience members from around the world to participate in five days of screenings, live performances, exhibitions and artist’s discussions. Over the years the festival has achieved critical acclaim and international recognition for its “sheer excellence in programming” and is recognized as a leading venue in the world of artist’s film and video.

This year, Media City opens at MOCAD on Tuesday, May 21 at 8pm with performances by legendary artists Michael Snow, John Oswald, Al Mattes and Detroit’s own post-industrial avant-noise band Wolf Eyes.

Check out the full 2013 festival catalogue online HERE

AND DON’T MISS THE FREE MEDIA CITY SHUTTLE! The shuttle departs daily from designated stops in Ann Arbor and Detroit and returns from Windsor each night of the festival - CLICK HERE for more info and to book your seats in advance!!

The Summer Arts Scavenger Hunt is a fun summer activity and a chance to win an iPod Touch! All members of the U-M community are invited to play — faculty, students, staff, and friends!

Below are the first three questions. Subscribe to Arts at Michigan’s weekly newsletter to receive each week’s question (along with other interesting arts information) in your inbox!

May 2: What folk legend is being honored at tonight’s show at The Ark? What birthday is he celebrating? What is the name of the progressive movement song written by this singer, which later became a Top 10 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary in 1962?

May 9: What American film director’s work is on display at Hatcher Graduate Library? What is his highest-grossing film to date? In what year was his body of work recognized with an Honorary Academy Award? 

May 16: What folk singer is playing at The Ark tonight? What was the name of her “folk opera”? What singer-songwriter noticed this singer in 2003, and signed her to Righteous Babe Records?

Keep track of your answers through the summer, and send all of your answers at one time to arts@umich.edu before midnight on Sunday September 8th!

Emilio Sanchez
Cuba and United States, 1921-1999
La Fortaleza
1970-75
Oil on canvas
Gift of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation, 2011/2.63

Recently UMMA and several academic museums in the US benefitted from the generosity of the Emilio Sanchez Foundation when it donated much of Sanchez’s life work. The gift to UMMA of eighty paintings and lithographs, along with other recent acquisitions from Cuba such as two folk paintings given by Dr. James L. Curtis, expand the collection in the direction of the Caribbean, an exciting growth area for the Museum.

You can see this new acquisition on view in the first-floor connector between the Museum’s historic wing and the Maxine and Stuart Frankel and the Frankel Family Wing until July 8, 2013.

Click here to read more.

Did you know that the University of Michigan has a wealth of public art waiting for you to explore? The collection includes both permanently installed and temporary artworks on every campus that span a wide range of media. Visit the Public Art website to browse through the collection for each campus, and go visit the artworks yourself.

You can plan a tour by browsing around on the Google map for each campus and finding out what interests you. Then print the maps, and start exploring!

HAVE FUN!

And don’t forget to visit the outdoor sculptures at UMMA!

Image: STIFF BOX NO. 12, Lucas Samaras, 1997; Cor-Ten Steel; Sculpture, Central Campus; In east court between Alumni Memorial Hall and the Frankel Family Wing of the Museum of Art