Displaying items by tag: National Medal of Arts

John Baldessari, the celebrated Los Angeles visual artist, will be among the 11 recipients of the 2014 National Medal of Arts that President Obama will present in a White House ceremony later this month, organizers announced on Thursday. 

Baldessari will be honored along with musician Meredith Monk, tenor George Shirley, actresses Sally Field and Miriam Colon, novelists Stephen King and Tobias Wolff as well as fellow artists Anna Hamilton and Ping Chong.

On Monday, July 28, President Obama awarded artist James Turrell and architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams with the National Medal of Arts, the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States government. The award was given to nineteen other recipients, including documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles, dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones, and arts patron Joan Harris. During the ceremony, President Obama said, “The arts and humanities aren't just there to be consumed when we have a moment. We need them." 

Turrell is best known for his groundbreaking exploration of light, color, and space. His immersive works push the boundaries of human perception and create all-encompassing sensory experiences. Turrell has said, “My work has no object, no image and no focus. With no object, no image and no focus, what are you looking at? You are looking at you looking. What is important to me is to create an experience of wordless thought.”

It looks like some pretty big congrats are in order for one of Arizona's own. On Tuesday, July 22, The National Endowment for the Arts announced that President Barack Obama would be awarding the National Medals of Arts as well as the National Humanities Medals on Monday, July 28, to a select group of artists throughout the United States, including Flagstaff-based artist James Turrell.

Turrell, who first began his artistic career in the early 1960s in California, has spent the last 50 years building a body of work that transforms perception through an innovative manipulation of light and space.

Ellsworth Kelly (b. 1933), a pioneer of American abstract art, will receive a National Medal of Arts from President Obama July 10, 2013 at the White House. The National Medal is the highest honor given to artists and art patrons by the U.S. government.

Kelly, a painter, sculptor and printmaker, began developing his unique approach to minimalism, color field painting and hard-edge painting in the 1950s. By the end of the decade, he had established himself as an important figure in the art world and three of his pieces were selected for the Whitney Museum of American Art’s seminal exhibition Young America 1957. Since setting himself apart from his peers thanks to his innovative style, Kelly has been lauded for his ability to pull abstract form, contour and color contrast from perceived reality.

Kelly, who turned 90 this year, is currently the subject of the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: Chatham Series, which is on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York through September 8, 2013.

A printmaker and painter, there is a quiet, striking quality that pervades all of Will Barnet’s art. Best known for his portraits of women, children, animals, family members, and friends, Barnet passed away at his home in Manhattan on November 13. He has lived at the National Arts Club building on New York City’s Gramercy Park since 1982. Barnet was 101.

A native of Beverly, Massachusetts, Barnet studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and then, starting in 1931, at the Arts Students League in New York. It was here that Barnet studied briefly with the early Modernist painter Stuart Davis and became acquainted with Arshile Gorky, a major influence on Abstract Expressionism. Four years after joining the League, Barnet was named the official printer and went on to work for the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project. He also made prints for well-known artists such as the Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco and the painter and cartoonist William Gropper.

Barnet started out as a Social Realist printmaker and had his first solo exhibition in 1935 at the Eighth Street Playhouse in Manhattan. Three years later, he had his first gallery show at the Hudson Walker Gallery. It was during this time that he married Mary Sinclair, a painter and fellow student. They had three sons.

In the 1940s Barnet was inspired by Modernist inclinations and his paintings became more colorful and fractured, depicting family scenes and young children. By the end of the decade Barnet moved towards complete abstraction after becoming involved with the Indian Space Painters, a group that created abstract paintings using forms from Native American art and modern European painting.

In the 1950s Barnet divorced Sinclair and remarried Elena Ciurlys with whom he had a daughter. It wasn’t until the 1960s that Barnet returned to representational painting, often using his wife and daughter as subjects. Barnet’s style had evolved and the portraits from this time are flatter and more exact. He also made a number of portraits of the architect Frederick Kiesler, the art critic Katherine Kuh, and the art collector Roy Neuberger during this time.

Barnet never stopped painting and continued to experiment and evolve stylistically, returning to abstraction in 2003. In 2010 he was the subject of the exhibition Will Barnet and the Art Students League at the Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery in Manhattan. He was awarded a National Medal of Arts in 2011, which he accepted from President Obama at a ceremony at the White House. The subject of many museum retrospectives, Will Barnet at 100, which took place at the National Academy Museum in 2011, was the last.

   Besides his work as an artist, Barnet was also an influential instructor. He taught graphic arts and composition at the Art Students League in 1936 and went on to teach painting at the school until 1980. Barnet also taught at Cooper Union from 1945 to 1978 and briefly at Yale, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and other schools.

Barnet is survived by his wife, three sons, one daughter, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren.

Painter and printmaker Will Barnet received one of the country's highest honors Monday when President Obama presented him with a National Medal of Arts.

Barnet, 100, has deep Maine ties. Much of the inspiration for his artistic vision derives from his time in Maine, particularly in and around the midcoast area of Phippsburg.

Barnet, who lives in New York most of the year, received his medal in an East Room ceremony at the White House.

The White House cited Barnet "for his contributions as an American painter, printmaker and teacher. His nuanced and graceful depictions of family and personal scenes, for which he is best known, are meticulously constructed of flat planes that reveal a lifelong exploration of abstraction, expressionism and geometry. For more than 80 years, Mr. Barnet has been a constant force in the visual arts world, marrying sophistication and emotion with beauty and form."

Among others who received honors Monday were actor Al Pacino, country music great Mel Tillis and pianist Andre Watts.

In remarks before conferring the medals, Obama praised artists for their contributions to society, and characterized those honored as "icons" for their courage to "dwell in possibilities."

"As much as we need engineers and scientists," the president said, "we also need artists and scholars ... to disrupt our views and challenge our assumptions."

Susan Danly, senior curator at the Portland Museum of Art, said the museum has 13 Barnet images in its collection, though none is currently on view.

"We are very proud of him," Danly said.

"This is a top honor bestowed on an artist in the country, and certainly Will Barnet is one of the pre-eminent painters in Maine today. He has a longstanding love of New England and of Maine."