The Endless Renaissance
April 17 – August 16, 2009
Guest Curator Steven Holmes
Bass Museum of Art
2121 Park Avenue
MIAMI BEACH, FL 33139
In her book Quoting Caravaggio, Mieke Bal argues that when an artist reference aspects of earlier work in their own, they irrevocably change the way in which we look at the quoted work. One of the most famous acts of this kind was executed by Marcel Duchamp in 1919, when he drew a moustache and goatee on a cheap postcard of the Mona Lisa, and titled it L.H.O.O.Q. Since then, generations of art students have been unable to see the Mona Lisa without also grinning (at least to themselves) as they remember Duchamp’s’ cheek. Duchampian subversion aside, however, the ‘quoting’ of earlier work is not new to art and while Bal’s book is an articulate presentation of the implications of quotation for art historians and theorists, her book is hardly news to artists themselves who, for centuries, have taken it as a given that what is old is new and vice versa. The Endless Renaissance is an exhibition that, on one hand, looks at how contemporary artists continue to quote and invoke the work of earlier artwork, and on the other hand, shows how the way that we experience the art of the past is anything but stable or predictable.
MEDIA CONTACT
Lee Ortega, Director of Marketing and Public Relations
Bass Museum of Art
T: 305.673.7530 x 9-2001
E: lortega@bassmuseum.org
The Bass Museum of Art is generously funded by the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, Cultural Arts Council; with additional support provided by Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners; State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; and Friends of the Bass Museum, Inc.
Images above:
Left:
Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Abdullahi Mohammed with Mainasara, Ogere-Remo, Nigeria, 2007
From the series The Hyena and Other Men
Digital C-Print
© Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery,
New York and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
Courtesy The Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE, Miami
Right:
Hyacinthe Rigaud (French, 1649-1743)
Hans William Bentinck, Earl of Portland,
K.G., 1698-1699
Oil on canvas
53 x 42”
Collection Bass Museum of Art
