An exhibition featuring rare works from a short-lived but pivotal modernist art movement during World War I will open Sept. 30 at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University."The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918" reintroduces to the public the avant-garde movement Vorticism, a term coined by American expatriate poet Ezra Pound to describe an abstracted figurative style. It emerged in London among English and American artists as a response to French Cubism, Italian Futurism and the staid English art scene.
"The Vorticists" is the first exhibition devoted to this Anglo-American movement to be presented in the United States since World War I. It includes paintings, works on paper, photographs and sculpture. Artists include Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Wyndham Lewis, William Roberts, Helen Saunders, Dorothy Shakespear, Edward Wadsworth and others."We are pleased to present the first major U.S. museum exhibition devoted to the Vorticists, who championed the creation of an avant-garde modern style with electrifying force and vitality," said Kimerly Rorschach, the Mary D.B.T. and James H. Semans Director of the Nasher Museum. "Visitors will be riveted by the Vorticist style, which combines machine-age forms, vibrant colors and the energetic imagery suggested by a vortex. This exciting work is rarely shown. The Vorticists have been overlooked for decades."The exhibition is the result of a partnership among the Nasher Museum and two international museums. Duke is the first venue for "The Vorticists," which will be on view through Jan. 2, 2011, then travel to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice (Jan. 29 to May 15, 2011) and to Tate Britain in London (June 14 to Sept. 18, 2011).
"The Vorticists" is co-curated by Mark Antliff, professor in the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies at Duke, and Vivien Greene, curator of 19th- and early 20th century art, Guggenheim Museum, New York.
The exhibition will be complemented by programs at the Nasher Museum, including Free Family Day events, a theatrical performance, a scholarly symposium, teacher workshops and the annual Semans Lecture by award-winning art critic and author Richard Cork.
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated 192-page color catalogue published by Tate Publishing and available at the Nasher Museum Store ($40, paperback). It includes essays by co-curators Antliff and Greene, among other contributors.
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Support for "The Vorticists: Rebel Artists in London and New York, 1914-1918" is provided by the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, Marilyn M. Arthur, Trent and Susan Carmichael, the Graduate Liberal Studies program at Duke, Pepper and Donald Fluke, James and Laura Ladd, Olympia Stone and Sims Preston, and Nancy Palmer Wardropper, with assistance from the British Council.
The Nasher Museum, at 2001 Campus Drive at Anderson Street on the Duke campus, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday; 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Thursday; and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays.Admission is $5 for adults, $4 for seniors and members of the Duke Alumni Association, $3 for non-Duke students with identification and free for youth 15 and younger. Admission is free to all on Thursday nights (except for ticketed events), made possible by SunTrust Bank and The Independent Weekly. Admission is free to Duke students, faculty and staff with Duke ID cards, and to Nasher Museum members.
Additional information is available at www.nasher.duke.edu.