Upcoming Exhibitions
Late Surrealism
May 24 – August 25, 2013
Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that began in the early twentieth century. Centered in Paris and interested in imaginary images, juxtaposition, chance, and the expression of the subconscious, it can be characterized as a retreat from the rational and an inquiry into the mysterious depths of the psyche.
Caption: Joan Miro, "Oeuf (galant ovale)," 1943 ca. © 2013 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris The Menil Collection, Houston, bequest of Marcia Simon Weisman. Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston
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Wols
September 13, 2013 – January 12, 2014
A draftsman, painter, and photographer, Wols (1913–1951) was one of the most ingenious and influential—if commercially unsuccessful—artists to emerge in postwar Europe. Along with Jean Dubuffet, Pierre Soulages, and Georges Mathieu, Wols was a leading figure in Tachisme, a movement in painting considered to be the European equivalent of American Abstract Expressionism. Named for the French word tache, meaning stain, Tachisme—an outgrowth of the larger Art Informel, or “art without form” movement—cultivated an automist style emphasizing free lines and forms drawn from the artist’s psyche.
Caption: Wolfgang Schulze Wols, Fish, 1949 © 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris. The Menil Collection, Houston. Photo: Paul Hester
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Nice. Luc Tuymans
September 27, 2013 – January 5, 2014
Since his first solo exhibition in 1985, Belgian artist Luc Tuymans has established himself as one of the most influential painters working today. He is well known for his distinctive painting style as well as for his choice of historically and emotionally charged subject matter. Tuymans derives his images from pre-existing sources, photographs, film stills, even mirror images. His deliberately spare palette, often-modest scale, unexpected cropping, obscured spaces, and blurred brushstrokes combine to reinforce the image’s status as a replica.
Luc Tuymans, The Secretary of State, 2005
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Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary 1926 – 1938
February 14 – June 1, 2014
“Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary 1926–1938” is the first major museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the breakthrough surrealist years of the Belgian artist, René Magritte, creator of some of the twentieth century’s most extraordinary images. It will trace significant strategies and themes from a seminal period in the artist’s career, particularly those of displacement, transformation, metamorphosis, and the “misnaming” of objects, as well as the representation of visions seen in half-waking states.
Rene Magritte, The Meaning of Night, 1927
Art and Truth: Gandhi and Images of Nonviolence
October 3, 2014 – January 11, 2015
“Art and Truth” explores for the first time the resonance of Mahatma Gandhi’s ethics of nonviolence in the visual arts through both works of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries and masterpieces of classical religious art of the past. Analyzing widely published images of Gandhi’s public persona and the highly symbolic ways in which he manifested his beliefs and lifestyle, this exhibition aims to bring together major works of art from different periods of Eastern and Western culture under the large theme of the arts of nonviolence. The exhibition’s themes echo the concerns of Menil Collection founders, John and Dominique de Menil who dedicated themselves to humanitarian causes.
unknown photographer, Gandhi’s Possessions 1948