Georgia Museum of Art | Exhibitions

Redefining the Modern Landscape in Europe and American, ca. 1920-1940
November 3, 2007 - January 27, 2008

Landscape as a distinct pictorial genre began to reemerge in the 16th-century as a test for artists to demonstrate their skills in competing with nature. But the development of landscape was not solely motivated by an attempt to accurately record the outside world:   nature served, for example, as the means to investigate the connection between the transience of human life and earthly beauty, to associate modern civilization with the mythic past, and to celebrate the identity and unity of a region or nation.   By the 19th century, the Impressionists in France and their counterparts in America used landscape as a platform to feature their new art, with their spontaneous experiments breaking from the labored academic tradition of history painting and celebrating rural life.  

By the 20th century, with the rise of abstract or non-representational art, landscape as a genre became somewhat threatened. This exhibition reveals how artists working in Europe and America continued to represent landscapes (and in general natural motifs), by appealing to and transforming past traditions in order to make a modern statement. Twentieth-century artists used landscape and nature to comment on the effects of technology, to elicit reflection on human authenticity, and to meditate on the human environment.   Because a number of artists traveled and studied abroad, or were displaced by wars ravaging throughout, visitors will be able to study the crosscurrents of European and American styles, techniques, and themes.  

Organized from the permanent collection and from works of art on extended loan to the Georgia Museum of Art, Redefining the Modern Landscape in Europe and America, ca. 1920-1940 includes such artists as Thomas Hart Benton, Pierre Bonnard, Pierre Daura, Rockwell Kent and Georgia O'Keeffe, among others

Curators: Giancarlo Fiorenza, the Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, and Paul Manoguerra, curator of American art

Galleries: On view in the Rachel Cosby Conway and Alfred Heber Holbrook Galleries and the George-Ann and Boone Knox Gallery of Prints and Drawings

Sponsors: The W. Newton Morris Charitable Foundation and the Friends of the Georgia Museum of Art