View this email in your browser

by Rowan Johnson
SOU Class of 2025, Creative Writing

Dorothea Tanning, Arizona Landscape, 1943, oil on linen, courtesy of private collection

Dorothea Tanning

American painter, printmaker, sculptor, writer, and poet Dorothea Tanning used her dreams as influences for her work. An almost entirely self-taught artist, her abstract and sculptural work was consistently dynamic and cerebral. Her long career in the art world meant she could explore many different mediums and processes. Her early work was mostly watercolor and sketch portraits. She became known for her work with oil paint, creating rich figures in front of hazy, surreal backgrounds. Near the end of her life, Tanning shifted to sculpture and written works, earning the title of “oldest living emerging poet”. No matter the medium, Tanning’s engagement with the female form and feminist issues in a male-dominated movement created visibility for other female artists to emerge and thrive. Her piece Arizona Landscape blends the image of a woman with the warm-toned earth of Arizona, a place she and her husband Max Ernst lived at the beginning of their marriage. Learn more about Dorothea Tanning with the link below, and see Arizona Landscape in person in the Schneider Museum of Art’s Entry Gallery.

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/dorothea-tanning-2024/learn-about-100-years-dorothea-tanning

Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (rue St. Denis), 1992, 42 lightbulbs, porcelain light sockets, and an electrical cord, courtesy of private collection

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Although brief, Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s art career touched the lives of many and remains a symbol of resistance to this day. Born in Cuba in 1957, Torres moved to New York in 1979 to pursue a photography degree at Pratt University. He would become known for his work exploring his grief after losing his partner, Ross Laycock, to AIDS-related complications. Through photography, sculpture, and performance art, Torres brought awareness to the AIDS crisis through art during a time when it was heavily stigmatized and misunderstood. His piece Untitled (rue St. Denis) is a sculpture of 42 lightbulbs in porcelain sockets. The two strands represent Torres and Laycock, with the lightbulbs dying at differing times throughout any given exhibition. The soft, warm light emitting from the bulbs has a romantic and ethereal quality. Paired with the minimal strands and porcelain holders, the piece is a reminder of devotion and the fragility of life. Learn more about Felix Gonzalez-Torres with the link below, and find Untitled (rue St. Denis) in the Entry Gallery of the Schneider Museum of Art.

https://www.theartstory.org/artist/gonzalez-torres-felix/

Tala Madani, Pussy Puzzle (Climbers), 2024, oil on linen, courtesy of private collection

Tala Madani

Iranian-born American artist Tala Madani uses bodies as a form of satire. Her chic, minimalist color palettes and cartoonish forms provide a playful tone for the brash, sometimes crude, paintings. The Los Angeles-based artist tackles themes of gender expectations, western versus non-western values, family structures, and violence. Sketching and sketchbooks play a large role in her work process, capturing spur-of-the-moment inspiration and quick, experimental forms. Her Pussy Puzzle series takes these sketch-like forms and place them into vignettes in the panels of a Rubik’s Cube. Her piece Pussy Puzzle (Climbers) shows little men trying to scale up the side of the cube adorned with frames of body parts and abstract lines. Trying to gain mastery or ownership of the cube, the painting shows them failing through the scattered body parts underneath it. Learn more about Tala Madani with the link below, and find Pussy Puzzle (Climbers) in the Schneider Museum of Art’s Entry Gallery.

https://art21.org/artist/tala-madani/

Discover More!

Tuesday Tours

Join us on Tuesdays at 12:30pm for a FREE Docent Led Tour of our current exhibition. Registration is not required but recommended. Register Now

Inside the Museum Archive

Visit the Inside the Museum Archive to read past editions.

Subscribe to our YouTube Channels

The Schneider Museum of Art and the Oregon Center for the Arts now have YouTube channels. Subscribe today to stay up to date on all the art happenings at SOU.

From the Archive
(VIDEO) Artist Spotlight: Ben Buswell

Schneider Museum of Art

Oregon Center for the Art

Thank you to our sponsors!

James M. Collier

Jeannie Taylor

The Schneider Museum of Art is located within the ancestral homelands of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples who lived here since time immemorial. These Tribes were displaced during rapid Euro-American colonization, the Gold Rush, and armed conflict between 1851 and 1856. In the 1850s, discovery of gold and settlement brought thousands of Euro-Americans to their lands, leading to warfare, epidemics, starvation, and villages being burned. In 1853 the first of several treaties were signed, confederating these Tribes and others together – who would then be referred to as the Rogue River Tribe. These treaties ceded most of their homelands to the United States, and in return they were guaranteed a permanent homeland reserved for them. At the end of the Rogue River Wars in 1856, these Tribes and many other Tribes from western Oregon were removed to the Siletz Reservation and the Grand Ronde Reservation. Today, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Community of Oregon (https://www.grandronde.org) and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians (http://www.ctsi.nsn.us/) are living descendants of the Takelma, Shasta, and Latgawa peoples of this area. We encourage you to learn about the land you reside on, and to join us in advocating for the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous people.

Copyright © 2018 Schneider Museum of Art, All rights reserved.

Our address is:
555 Indiana Street
Ashland, OR 97520

Want to change how you receive these emails?
You can update your preferences or unsubscribe from this list.