Videos from the Phillips

Art Historian Cornelia Homburg explains the myth of van Gogh as “mad genius”

Art Historian Cornelia Homburg discusses the artists’ friendship and rivalry

Intersections artist John F. Simon Jr. discusses his installation at the Phillips, Points, Lines, and Colors in Succession, on view October 17, 2013 through February 9, 2014. Inspired by the progression of movement in the natural world, Simon's four-part installation in the Phillips house stairwell incorporates drawing, software, and computer-generated fabrication. The works, evoking meandering lines, steep curves, and improvisation, engage with Wassily Kandinsky's Succession (1935) in the Phillips's permanent collection.

Exhibition curator Eliza Rathbone gives an introduction to Van Gogh Repetitions. In the first Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890) exhibition in DC in 15 years, the Phillips brings together 35 of his celebrated portraits and landscapes from some of the world’s most renowned collections. It features results of more than half a decade of research into the artist’s process, revealing a fascinating picture of his personal life and art. While recognized for the intensity and speed with which he painted, van Gogh also worked with careful deliberation, creating multiple versions of some of his most famous subjects.

In April 2013, the Phillips partnered with the US Department of State to conduct a series of workshops in Pakistan focusing on art and social change. Using Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series (1940–41) as a catalyst for conversation about the power of storytelling through art, emerging artists, middle and high school students, art educators, and museum professionals worked together to create visual narratives about identity, personal struggle, and Pakistani history. The exhibition, presenting 29 works by emerging Pakisani artists and 20 works by students, continues the Phillips’s history of being a leader in international cultural diplomacy.

Most examinations began with a careful inspection in good overall lighting to get a general sense of the painting. Other techniques exploit different types of electromagnetic radiation, such as ultraviolet, infrared, and x-rays. This collection of videos focuses on the study of four paintings by Braque in The Phillips Collection. Associate Conservator Patricia Favero narrates her findings.

In this video, the painting The Round Table (1929) is examined in visible, raking, and ultraviolet light.

In this video, the painting Lemons and Napkin Ring (1929) is examined in transmitted light and with infrared imaging.

In this video, the painting The Washstand (1944) is examined in specular light, a form of raking light viewed from an angle.

In this video, the paint surface of Pewter Pot and Plate of Fruit (1944) is examined with the stereomicroscope.

In this video, x-ray fluorescence spectrometry, or XRF, a recent advance in x-ray technology, is discussed.

Intersections artist Bernhard Hildebrandt installs and discusses his work, A Conjugation of Verb, on view June 27 through September 22, 2013. Using images of El Greco’s The Repentant St. Peter(c. 1600–1605 or later) from the collection, Baltimore-based artist Hildebrandt explores baroque themes of high drama, spectacle, and spatial movement. By converting a series of images into a video sequence, the artist connects painting, photography, and film.

Exhibition curator Renée Maurer discusses Georges Braque and the Cubist Still Life, 1928–1945. The exhibition is the first in-depth look at the years leading up to and through World War II, a period of experimentation and transition in Braque’s career, when he used the motif of still life to synthesize cubist discoveries and hone his individual style. Forty-four sumptuous canvases, along with related objects, trace the artist’s journey from painting still lifes in intimate interiors in the late 1920s, to vibrant, large-scale spaces in the 1930s, to more personal interpretations of daily life in the 1940s

German artist Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950) installs a wax room at The Phillips Collection, the first permanently installed artwork at the Phillips since the Rothko Room in 1960 and the first wax room that Laib has created for a specific museum.

Exhibition co-curator Klaus Ottmann discusses the exhibition Angels, Demons, and Savages: Pollock, Ossorio, Dubuffet, on view February 9 through May 12, 2013.

Intersections artist Xavier Veilhan discusses his exhibition (IN)balance, on view at the Phillips November 3, 2012 through February 10, 2013. The first major museum presentation of Veilhan's work in the U.S. and the most extensive Intersections project to date features 18 recent pieces in several media that reflect a balance between natural and social forces, new technologies and historical styles. Veilhan's large resin sculpture, The Bear (2010), greets visitors on the corner of 21st and Q Streets. The exhibition is supported in part by the Institut Français—Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Nov 2, 2013 Known for his novels chronicling American life, including The Ice Storm (1994), The Diviners (2005), and The Four Fingers of Death (2010), Moody is also deeply involved in music. His band, the Wingdale Community Singers, performs folk music with a modernist edge. In his recent collection of essays, On Celestial Music: And Other Adventures in Listening (2012), Moody expresses his passion for music from Otis Redding to Meredith Monk.

Curator Klaus Ottman discusses Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture, on view October 6, 2012 through January 6, 2013. Per Kirkeby: Paintings and Sculpture is the most comprehensive survey in the United States to date of works by Scandinavia’s most highly acclaimed living artist, Per Kirkeby (Danish, b. 1938). Equally trained as a geologist and an artist, Kirkeby is a painter of eminent sensuality, creating richly layered canvases filled with prodigious detail and animated by an unequaled material quality of color. He is not only a leading painter, sculptor, and printmaker, but also a prolific writer, poet, and filmmaker.

Artist Antony Gormley discusses his exhibition, Antony Gormley: Drawing Space. The Phillips presents drawings and sculptures by one of Britain's most high-profile living artists, Antony Gormley (b. 1950), the Turner Prize-winner's first U.S. museum exhibition of works on paper. Known for his sculpture and installations that investigate the human form and its connection to space, Gormley is also an accomplished draftsman. Approximately 80 works on paper along with two recent sculptures emphasize the intrinsic link between the two media.

Curator Renee Maurer discusses Jasper Johns: Variations on a Theme, on view June 2 through September 9, 2012. One of the most celebrated artists of the modern era, Jasper Johns (b. 1930) transformed the field of printmaking. For over 50 years, he has tested the medium's boundaries, reinventing subjects like targets, American flags, and images from art history in endless variation. The first exhibition of his work at The Phillips Collection features 101 iconic prints with groundbreaking examples of lithography, intaglio, silkscreen, and lead relief.

Composed of intricate ink and acrylic drawings on canvas that cover the café walls, One Day, After the Rain follows the movement of sunrise to nightfall, paying homage to Arthur Dove’s landscapes in The Phillips Collection. Sandra Cinto creates dreamlike environments with her art. “I am interested in passages of time marked by sun and moon, day and night, and the movement of water,” she says. “I chose the language of drawing because of its immediacy and direct character. My intention is to propose an immersive experience through color and form.”

Ecliptic—three interrelated large-scale drawings made of yarn looped over thousands of nails—investigates spatial perception and engages the architecture of the gallery. The installation, like much of Shotz’s work, is inspired by science, referencing the solar system and the perpetual rotation of planets. At once monumental and delicate, flat and three-dimensional, Ecliptic transforms the room into a weightless environment.

Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art Vesela Sretenovic introduces the installation Eye to Eye: Joseph Marioni at the Phillips, on view Oct. 22, 2011-Jan. 29, 2012. Thirteen glowing paintings by Marioni are surrounded by about 40 works from the museum's collection that trace the development of color and light in modern painting. This is the first Washington, D.C., exhibition of Marioni's work. Organized as part of The Phillips Collection's 90th anniversary. More about this installation: http://www.phillipscollection.org/anniversary/joseph_marioni.aspx

Ballet students from the Kirov Academy of Ballet of Washington, D.C. bring Degas's artworks to life in the Phillips's galleries in honor of special exhibition Degas's Dancers at the Barre: Point and Counterpoint on view October 1, 2011 through January 8, 2012 at The Phillips Collection.

Edgar Degas (1834--1917) was fascinated by the world of ballet. Bringing together about 30 works from some of the world's finest collections, the exhibition traces ballet in Degas's art from the 1870s to 1900. It is the first exploration of Degas's dancers in Washington, D.C., in over 25 years. The exhibition celebrates the Phillips's Dancers at the Barre as a crowning achievement in the artist's four decade career and presents discoveries from the painting's recent conservation. The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection.

Will Ryman's Roses: 58th Street August 4, 2011-January 5, 2012 Colossal fiberglass and stainless steel rose blossoms adorn the Phillips's lawn at the corner of 21st and Q streets. Drawing inspiration from nature's cycles, the structure transforms in the changing light of the fall and winter seasons. In conjunction with 90 Years of New, a yearlong celebration of the museum's 90th anniversary.

Sk(in) is a two-part sculptural installation—the first, massive yet delicate, suggests tree branches and occupies the courtyard; the second extends indoors, to rupture the "skin" of the gallery walls.

In The World Series, deSouza responds to Jacob Lawrence's The Migration Series (1940−41) with 30 photographs taken on his travels and audio recordings of his experiences and memories.

In Lunar Bower, panels of fabric are sewn together and stretched across the café, suggesting the ethereal night skies in Albert Pinkham Ryder's paintings. Light is given a corporeal presence as it filters through the hanging sculpture.

Curator Elsa Smithgall introduces the exhibition Kandinsky and the Harmony of Silence: Painting with White Border, on view June 11--Sept. 4, 2011. After a visit to his native Moscow in 1912, Wassily Kandinsky (1866--1944) sought to record his "extremely powerful impressions." The exhibition reunites his 1913 masterpiece, Painting with White Border, with preparatory studies from international collections, and compares it with other closely related works.

An overview from curator Elsa Smithgall for the exhibition Stella Sounds: The Scarlatti K Series, on view June 11—Sept. 4, 2011. The eight recent sculptures from Frank Stella's (b. 1936) Scarlatti Kirkpatrick Series—swirling, multicolored polychrome forms with coiled steel tubing armatures—are dynamic evocations of the colorful sounds and rhythms of Domenico Scarlatti's harpsichord sonatas.

Sk(in) is a two-part sculptural installation—the first, massive yet delicate, suggests tree branches and occupies the courtyard; the second extends indoors, to rupture the "skin" of the gallery walls.

The Coronation is a three-channel video with sound, projected on three 52-inch plasma monitors. Wall-mounted and arranged like a triptych, the work alters the architecture of the gallery and establishes a visual dialogue with Georges Rouault's Tragic Landscape, 1930, from the permanent collection. The Coronation isa pictorial narrative, in which the Pyes, who come from Canada, explore issues of gender and identity. In three separate scenes that unfold simultaneously and evoke panels in an altarpiece, the couple is shown in a series of physical transformations against an Edenic landscape, as they come together and separate. The Pyes have exhibited their work, nationally and internationally, including at The Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain; Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada. Their work has been screened in numerous film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival, Canada; the Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland; and Les Rencontres Internationales in Paris, Berlin, and Madrid. Their work will be shown at Curator's Office, Washington, D.C., concurrently with the installation at the Phillips.

Phillips Curator Susan Behrends Frank gives insight on special exhibition David Smith Invents, on view at the Phillips from Feb. 12 through May 15, 2011. David Smith Invents explores an extraordinarily fertile period in the career of the sculptor David Smith (1906--65) from the early 1950s to the early 1960s. On exhibit are 40 works, including sculptures, paintings, drawings, and Smith's own photographs of his sculptures. Smith famously recognized no distinction between sculpture, painting, and drawing, except for one dimension, asserting that the act of creating does not change just because the medium changes. Instead, he used such widely varying materials as steel, bronze, oil paint, aerosol spray enamels, ink, and tempera to explore his ideas in two and three dimensions. The work of Smith's last 15 years used an increasingly simplified vocabulary of predominantly geometric forms. In the first part of the 1950s, he was particularly captivated by concave and convex forms, from which he produced endless variations on volume, shape, line, and contour, without employing solid mass. In the works in this exhibition, concave and convex shapes play out in two and three dimensions in multiple configurations and repetitions, moving freely between media.

Curator Peter Benson Miller introduces special exhibition Philip Guston, Roma, on view at The Phillips Collection Feb. 12 through May 15, 2011. Philip Guston, Roma brings together for the first time 39 paintings from Philip Guston's Roma series, produced during his six months as artist-in-residence at the American Academy in Rome in 1970--71. Saturated in deep pinks and salmons, Guston's cartoon-like pictures evoke numerous aspects of the ancient and modern Roman cityscape and Italian art and culture, from the films of Federico Fellini to the works of both modern and Renaissance Italian artists. The Roma paintings mark a pivotal time in Guston's career. Guston (1913--80), whose abstractions in the 1950s and 1960s won him critical acclaim, was a leading figure in the New York School that included such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. By the late 1960s, however, Guston felt abstraction was no longer viable. Profoundly affected by the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and the shift in the art world toward pop art and minimalism, Guston was determined to reinvent storytelling in modern painting. His initial effort at creating this new figurative vocabulary went on view at New York's Marlborough Gallery just weeks before he left for Rome. These new works, with their sophisticated political satire and self-parody painted in a deliberately clumsy style, stunned the artistic community, which neither understood nor accepted them. As a part of La Dolce DC, a citywide celebration of all things Italian in partnership with the embassy of Italy, Philip Guston, Roma presents a crucial period in the life of a modern American artist inspired and shaped by Italian art and culture, not only during his Roman sojourn in 1971, but throughout his life.

Sam Gilliam's new work responds directly to Arthur Dove's Flour Mill II (1938) which he first saw at the Phillips in the early 1960s. On view Jan. 29 through April 24, 2011. During the fall of 1967 The Phillips Collection gave Sam Gilliam his first solo museum exhibition. Nearly 45 years later, Gilliam has created his first site-specific installation for the Phillips, to coincide with its 90th anniversary. Artworks: Arthur Dove, Flour Mill II. 1938. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC. Sam Gilliam, Flour Mill, 2011.

Go behind-the-scenes with Howard Hodgkin's As Time Goes By (2009), among the world's largest etchings, in this three part video series. Part I: Devising a system to mount, display, and store the ten-panel, 3,600 square foot artwork Hodgkin's most ambitious work to date is on view Jan. 8-May 8, 2011 in 90 Years of New: Howard Hodgkin's As Time Goes By, a special installation in honor of the Phillips's 90th anniversary. Comprising starbursts of vibrant color, the two 20-foot-long, hand-painted etchings were recently acquired for the Phillips's permanent collection. Turner Prize winner Hodgkin had his first American exhibition at the Phillips in 1984.

Go behind-the-scenes with Howard Hodgkin's As Time Goes By (2009), among the world's largest etchings, in this three part video series. Part II: Installing the panels in the Phillips's intimate main gallery Hodgkin's most ambitious work to date is on view Jan. 8-May 8, 2011 in 90 Years of New: Howard Hodgkin's As Time Goes By, a special installation in honor of the Phillips's 90th anniversary. Comprising starbursts of vibrant color, the two 20-foot-long, hand-painted etchings were recently acquired for the Phillips's permanent collection. Turner Prize winner Hodgkin had his first American exhibition at the Phillips in 1984.

Dorothy Kosinski, director of The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., interviews artist Howard Hodgkin. They discuss the museum's major new acquisition of two monumental Hodgkin works -- As Time Goes By -- gifts to the museum in memory of Laughlin Phillips, installed in the museum's main gallery. The interview took place in January 2011. This video is the third part in a series going behind the scenes with Hodgkin's monumental work As Time Goes By.

Dec 20, 2010 Steve Mance and Megan Ignash remember their first date in Spring 2010.

Andile Ndlovu of the Washington Ballet responds in dance to Barbara Liotta's sculpture, Icarus, and Maurice Ravel's Sonata for Violin and Cello performed by Yvonne Lam and Ignacio Alcover. Ndlovu and collaborator Septime Webre, artistic director of the Washington Ballet, use the abstract forms of the artwork and the mythical character's backstory as inspiration. Performed as part of The Phillips Collection's INTERSECTIONS series January 14 and 21, 2010.

Jae Ko's large, three-part installation, "Force of Nature," created for the Phillips, is made from rolls of kraft paper, often used for wrapping and packing, that the artist re-rolled and stacked against the walls in different configurations. Envisioned specifically for the area connecting the Goh Annex and the Sant Building, one section of the installation fills the space between floor and ceiling, and then spills down the wall beside the stairs; two other stacks descend gradually, like gentle slopes or streams. Force of Nature dwells on both the beauty and power of natural forces within an architectural setting. Ko works exclusively in paper. Experimenting with different kinds of paper (from rice paper to newspaper to adding-machine paper), she rolls, cuts, glues, soaks, and dyes it, manipulating her material into sculptural forms. Her sculptures encompass wall reliefs and floor pieces, made of large bundles of paper that are either stacked rigidly against the wall or fall naturally according to the whims of gravity. Ko finds inspiration in nature, and her forms readily evoke organic matter-tree rings, tornadoes, twisted hair, seeds. Born in Korea, Ko lives and works in Washington, D.C. She received a B.F.A. from Wako University, Tokyo, Japan, and an M.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, and is in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and the Washington Convention Center, all in Washington, D.C. Ko's work is also currently on view at Marsha Mateyka Gallery.

In this video, Phillips Collection curator Elsa Smithgall introduces special exhibition TruthBeauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845-1945, on view at The Phillips Collection Oct. 9, 2010 through Jan. 9, 2011. Like impressionism, which challenged the traditions of painting, pictorialism expanded the possibilities of photography beyond the literal description of a subject. Pictorialist photographers produced some of the most spectacular photographs in the history of the medium and influenced subsequent developments in modernist photography. Comprising over 120 photographs, this exhibition retraces pictorialism's beginnings with the experiments of Hill and Adamson and Julia Margaret Cameron; through its mastery by Alfred Stieglitz, Gertrude Käsebier, and Alvin Langdon Coburn; to its lasting legacy in early works by Edward Weston and Imogen Cunningham.

The artist speaks! Hear Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) read from his notebooks on art at The Phillips Collection in 1992. In a special exhibition on view through September 12, 2010 at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., see works from a pivotal interlude in Richard Pousette-Dart's prolific career, when he merged drawing with painting in luminous and poetic works created nearly without paint. They continued to inspire him; as Pousette-Dart said, "white is something you endlessly return to."

Kate Shepherd is best known for large, vertical, mostly monochrome paintings in hi-gloss enamel on wooden panels. Using intense colors, delicate lines, and multiple perspectives, she suggests structures and patterns - wallpaper, steps, lace, a cage, for example - that create illusionary three-dimensional space. Her work in the former dining room of the Phillips house incorporates painting and sculpture and focuses on architectural details. Shepherd earned a BA from Oberlin College in Ohio and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she lives and works. She has had numerous solo exhibitions and her work is featured in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Regi Müller's work is about maintaining a tension between chaos and order through random distribution of geometric shapes. In her earlier work, she used a grid and dice to achieve chance placement of the pieces; now she uses a computerized system. This spring she transform the museum's Vradenburg Café by installing hundreds of peach-colored urethane Caps on its walls and windows. Trained as a textile and graphic designer, Müller lives in New York City. She is the winner of numerous awards and honors and has exhibited in her native Switzerland, as well as in the United States. Music by Serge Uberto.

Tricia and Mat Herban discuss their abiding bond with art and each other. (Recorded at the Phillips on March 1, 2010)

Mar 1, 2010 Elaine and Dick Van Blerkom remember falling in love with Renoir's Luncheon of the Boating Party (and each other) in 1963.

Mar 1, 2010 Pamela Jafari recalls jazz, Jacob Lawrence, and blossoming romance at Phillips after 5 in March 2009.

Meyers explores two-dimensional space in an exquisitely detailed wall drawing composed of thin, tremulous lines. The drifting whirls of at the time being, drawn around an archway in the Goh Annex, move toward each other, meeting above the arch and creating optical vibrations. The color, movement, and energy of the drawing relate to the brushwork and colors of Vincent van Gogh's The Road Menders (1889), a painting in the collection.

Curator Elsa Smithgall introduces the exhibition Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction at The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. Although best known for her iconic representations of flowers, landscapes, and animal bones, Georgia O'Keeffe's abstract work is as bold and breathtaking as that of her European contemporaries Picasso, Matisse, and Kandinsky. See an American legend in a whole new light in this exhibition of over 100 paintings, drawings, and watercolors. In conjunction with Georgia O'Keeffe: Abstraction, co-organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe.