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Aberrance and Artifice:
The Norton Collection
June 5 - July 28, 2013
Many of the works
that comprise the Norton Collection were made in the mid-1990s by
then-emerging American artists, including Gregory Crewdson, Tim Ebner, Elliott
Green, Tom Knechtel, Judy Pfaff and Alexis Rockman. The group of photographs,
paintings, drawings, and sculpture included in this exhibition rupture visual
and cultural boundaries to interrogate perceptions of what is considered
"normal" or "natural." By playfully fusing conflicting
things or ideas, the artists explore the contradictory relationships between
repulsion and desire, earthly and immaterial, fascination and dread.
Tom Knechtel's painting, Lessons in the Theatre:
Ejaculation, is one of twenty eight contemporary works of art that is
on view as part of the exhibition Aberrance and Artifice: The Norton
Collection, a group of paintings, sculpture, drawings and photographs
donated to the Haggerty Museum in 2000 by Eileen and Peter Norton. Los Angeles-based
artist Knechtel delivered an opening night lecture at the museum on Wednesday,
June 5, 2013. The lecture can be found online
as a YouTube video (45:34).
Knechtel's paintings juxtapose beautifully rendered, naturalistic
imagery of humans and animals with elaborately detailed ornamentation and
abstract elements. These carefully orchestrated spectacles are rife with
meaning, and Knechtel's wide ranging interests in various genres of theater,
from puppet to kabuki, and literature, from poetry to folklore, inform his
aesthetic choices. The ironic and open ended narratives that unfold in his
paintings can be considered embodiments of Knechtel's imagination and personal
experience, in which fantasy and reality are compressed and complex issues
of identity, artifice, sexuality, morality, and memory are explored. Free
and open to the public.
This exhibition and accompanying programs are sponsored
in part by the Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin
and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Introductory text for the exhibition
Aberrance and Artifice: The Norton Collection
-
- Peter and Eileen Norton began seriously collecting contemporary
art in the 1980s, and in 1998 they expanded their already substantial collection
with the purchase of an 800-piece collection from Clyde and Karen Beswick.
This acquisition served as the impetus for the Nortons to subdivide nearly
1,000 works of art into groupings organized by theme and subject matter.
These mini-collections were donated to museums across the country to increase
appreciation for contemporary art and strengthen the permanent collection
holdings of the recipient institutions. The works that comprise the Norton
Collection at the Haggerty Museum were created in the 1980s and 1990s by
a group of then-emerging American artists.
-
- The twenty eight photographs, paintings, drawings, and
sculpture included in this exhibition share a common visual principle:
the grotesque. While the popular definition of the term has been narrowed
to signal disgust, it was historically employed to describe fanciful wall
decorations -- combinations of plants, mythical figures, architectural
elements, and human forms -- discovered during the fifteenth century excavation
of the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea. Eventually, connotations of the grotesque
began to shift away from the whimsical and ornamental toward the caricatured
and carnivalesque, finally resulting in the present association with the
repellent and horrible.
-
- Though considered a continuous artistic tradition, the
grotesque cannot be reduced to a particular style, genre, or subject. Rather,
it must be characterized by its relationship to boundaries, specifically
its unique capacity to playfully fuse seemingly irreconcilable things or
feelings. Discrete identities are intermixed in the hybrid human-animal
forms produced by Deborah Brown, Tim Ebner and Elliott Green; the distinction
between fantasy and reality collapses in the dreamscapes conjured by Tom
Knechtel and Tom Wudl; natural motifs merge with the artificial and alien
in the elaborately constructed tableaus of Alexis Rockman and Gregory Crewdson.
-
- A grotesque image is mutable and impure by definition
or, as Frances Connelly argues, "it always represents a state of change,
breaking open what we know and merging it with the unknown. As such, the
one consistent visual attribute of the grotesque is that of flux. Whether
aberrant, metaphoric, or combinatory, grotesques are all in a transitional,
in-between state of being."
-
- It is the grotesque's ambiguous status that holds revelatory
value, that is, a grotesque image has the potential to elicit meaning by
simultaneously undermining and expanding our understanding of the categorical,
familiar, and undisputed. By rupturing visual and cultural distinctions,
grotesque images trigger confusion and destabilize the absolute. This deliberate
distortion of accepted realities produces emotional and intellectual conflicts,
compelling the viewer to consider the relationships between repulsion and
desire; earthly and immaterial; fascination and dread; sacred and profane;
horrific and humorous. An effective grotesque creates the conditions for
this tension, prompting some level of self- awareness or reflection on
larger existential issues, including perceptions of identity, propriety,
established social roles and hierarchies, and cultural conventions.
-
- Frances S. Connelly, The Grotesque in Western Art
and Culture: The Image at Play (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2012), 5.
Gallery guide for the exhibition
- To view the gallery guide please
click here.
-
Images and captions of artworks in the exhibition
- To view images and captions please
click here.
Checklist for the exhibition
- Ayhens Olive
- American, b. 1943
- Phyllis Shafer
- American, b. 1958
- Paul Pratchenko
- American, b. 1944
- Cadavre Exquis Drawing #465,
1993
- Mixed media collage on paper
- 14 1/4 x 10 1/2 in
- 2000.10.1
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Deborah Brown
- American, b. 1968
- Untitled (Mushroom Centaur),
1994
- Mixed media
- 9 1/2 x 9 x 5 1/2 in
- 2000.10.2
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Deborah Brown
- American, b. 1968
- Queen Hog, 1996
- Assemblage of gold leaf over taxidermy mold, rubber,
and tulle
- 19 1/2 x 21 x 18 in
- 2000.10.3 a&b
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Shayne Chandler
- American, b. 1967
- Coronation (Carnation), 1991
- Mixed media assemblage
- 6 3/4 x 4 1/4 x 1 in
- 2000.10.4
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Gregory Crewdson
- American, b. 1962
- Untitled (Dead Fox with Grapes),
1994
- C-print
- 27 3/4 x 35 3/4 in
- 2001.13.1
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Michele Oka Doner
- American, b. 1945
- Winged Chair, 1989
- Bronze
- 24 1/2 x 23 1/2 x 15 1/2 in
- 2001.12
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Robert Dunlavey
- American, b. 1955
- Winged Devil, 1984
- Wood, bronze, and oil paint
- 6 1/2 x 10 3/4 in
- 2000.10.6
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Tim Ebner
- American, b. 1953
- Untitled (Wolf, Alligator and Fish), 1997
- Oil on canvas
- 48 x 42 x 2 in
- 2000.10.7
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Chris Finley
- American, b. 1971
- Untitled (Sugarfoot Brown),
1993
- Mixed media assemblage
- 7 x 12 x 12 in
- 2000.10.8
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Michael Gonzalez
- American, b. 1953
- Untitled, 1991
- Assemblage of silicone, tin plated copper grounding braids,
and suction cups
- 14 x 11 x 1/2 in
- 2000.10.10
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Michael Gonzalez
- American, b. 1953
- Untitled, 1991
- Assemblage of tin plates, copper grounding braids with
push pins
- 82 in
- 2000.10.9
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Robert Helm
- American, b. 1943
- Garden Wind, 1991
- Oil on panel
- 19 1/4 x 26 3/4 x 2 1/2 in
- 2001.13.2
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Biff Henrich
- American, b. 1953
- Untitled (Turkey), 1989
- Ektacolor print
- 42 1/4 x 31 1/8 x 1 1/8 in
- 2000.11.4
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Elliott Green
- American, b. 1960
- Untitled #104, 1990
- Acrylic on canvas
- 24 x 31 1/2 x 1 1/8 in
- 2000.11.1
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Elliott Green
- American, b. 1960
- Emergence 46, 1993
- Acrylic on canvas
- 36 x 24 in
- 2000.11.2
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Elliott Green
- American, b. 1960
- Untitled, 1995
- Acrylic paint with collage on panel
- 23 7/8 x 35 3/4 x 3/4 in
- 2000.11.3
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Mark Heresy
- American, b. 1965
- Will to Power, 1992
- Ink on paper
- 28 x 22 in
- 2000.11.5
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Michael Jenkins
- American, b. 1957
- Balancing Boy, 1991
- Assemblage of steel, wire, felt, buttons, and wood with
paint and ink
- 72 x 8 in
- 2000.11.6a-c
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- DeLoss McGraw
- American, b. 1945
- Citizens Dressed Up as Herbert Hoover's Dog, 1989
- Gouache on paper
- 10 3/4 x 13 1/4 in
- 2001.13.4
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Tom Knechtel
- American, b. 1952
- Lessons in the Theatre: Ejaculation, 1991
- Oil on panel with wire sculpture
- 40 3/4 x 50 x 1 1/2 in Irregular
- 2001.13.3
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Ann Page
- American, b. 1940
- Green Snake, 1989
- Mixed media
- 24 1/2 x 25 x 12 in
- 2000.10.11
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Judy Pfaff
- American, b. 1946
- Kids, 1990
- Assemblage of adhesive paper on glass
- 8 x 6 x 1/2 in
- 2000.10.12a-d
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Alexis Rockman
- American, b. 1962
- Untitled (JG92), 1994
- Ink and watercolor on paper
- 21 1/4 x 27 x 1 3/8 in
- 2001.13.6
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Alexis Rockman
- American, b. 1962
- Kapok Tree, 1995
- Oil on panel
- 96 x 63 3/4 x 1 3/4 in
- 2001.13.7
- Gift of Peter Norton
- Collection of the Haggerty Museum of Art
-
-
- Anna-Maria Sircello
- American, b. 1965
- Cornucopia, 1993
- Assemblage of wicker cornucopia and hair
- 11 x 13 x 9 in
- 2000.10.13
- Gift of Eileen and Peter Norton