If I’d come across the artist Simon Hantai before I went to TEFAF Maastricht this year, I don’t remember him. But one booth (Galerie Beres, I think) featured several works by him, and I was intrigued enough to take a couple of pictures so that I could remember to look him up upon my return (the top two photos here, and sorry about the fuzziness).   

It turned out that I didn’t really need the reminder, because within days, the National Gallery of Art announced the acquisition of Etude (1969) by Hantai, its first painting by him.

That sent me to his 2008 obit in The New York Times, which explained my deficiency (a bit). It described him as “a highly regarded, famously reclusive French painter whose work explored ideas of absence and silence,”  and elaborated:

In 1982, Mr. Hantaï represented France at the Venice Biennale. Later that year, he withdrew from view, in what he described as a reaction against the rampant commercialization of art and the state’s unwelcome involvement in the making of art. Retreating to his home in Paris, he rarely left the house and refused requests to exhibit his paintings. But over the next decade and a half, Mr. Hantaï quietly produced what many critics believe to be his finest work.

The obit continued, describing his invention of a process known as pliage: 

In 1960, Mr. Hantaï began to manipulate and crease his canvases before carefully brushing them with bright liquid color. Where most painters saw canvas as merely a surface to hold paint, Mr. Hantaï focused on its essential physical nature: it was a textile that could be folded, scrunched or tied before paint touched it.

The result, when his painted canvases were unfolded, was repeating patterns of jagged whiteness that could suggest ice crystals, geologic rifts or leaf forms. The paintings seemed punctuated by absence — a kind of visual silence — a telling motif for an artist who was an exile. Mr. Hantaï’s important folded paintings include the series “Mariales” (“Cloaks”), “Whites” and “Tabulas.”

And his red Etude, above right.

The NGA says that  the Pompidou Centre is working on a retrospective of Hantai’s work next year, which it expects “will bring him international attention.” Wouldn’t it be nice if that exhibit were coming to the U.S.? The Metropolitan Museum owns no works by Hantai, and the Modern, which owns two, has neither on view. Nothing comes up in a search at the Guggenheim, SF MoMA, LACMA, MFA-Boston, the Philadelphia Museum or the Art Institute of Chicago, either.

I wonder if it’s still possible for an American museum to ask for the Hantai. I’d certainly like to see more, and a simple request — even after an exhibit is on view — has been known to work before. At left, btw, is Blue Muen from 1967.

 Photo Credits: Etude, courtesy of NGA; Blue Meun, Courtesy of Paul Rodgers / 9W Gallery

 

 

Leaving aside the List Visual Arts Center, we don’t usually think of the arts as foremost at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. But today it announced a forward-thinking inititative — a new Center for Art, Science & Technology — intended to propel MIT’s goal of integrating the arts into its curriculum and research. CAST, as it will be known, is “A joint initiative of the office of the Provost and the schools of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.” Evan Ziporyn, a music professor of Music, has been names as CAST’s inaugural director.

The Mellon Foundation provided $1.5 million in funds over four years for the center, which will be used to give

awards to faculty, researchers and curators seeking to develop cross-disciplinary courses, new research or exhibitions that span the arts, science and technology….supplement[s to]  MIT’s existing Visiting Artists program…to embed artists’ residencies in the curriculum and create a platform for collaboration with faculty, students and research staff in the development, display and performance of new and experimental artwork or technologies for artistic expression.  In addition, the grant will support the participation of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in the activities of the Center. 

MIT, meanwhile, has pledged to mount “a major, bi-annual international symposium on art, science and technology,” with the first set for the 2013-14 academic year.   CAST will be part of the Office of the Provost, which signals it as a priority, I think.

A year ago, MIT held “FAST, the Festival of Art, Science and Technology” as part of its 150th anniversary celebration, and published a report called “The Arts at MIT.” CAST builds on that. (There’s more in the press release here.)

All of this is great; my only worry is that $1.5 million may not go that far.

Other art things are happening at MIT, too. On May 3, the MIT Museum will open the1,650 sq. ft. Kurtz Gallery for Photography, whose first exhibition will show 75 photographs by Berenice Abbott, plus letters and documents — Photography and Science: An Essential Unity.

And on May 10, MIT plans to dedicate Ring Stone by Cai Guo-Qiang — a monumental white granite sculpture and his first public work for a university. (There’s another picture here.)

Consisting of twelve “individual, but indivisible links cut from a 39 1/2-foot-long single block of white granite” — and weighing about 14 metric tons — the piece will be accompanied by seven Japanese Black Pine trees, planted inside the rings and nearby. It will be positioned on the lawn of the MIT Sloan School of Management, observing the principles of Feng Shui. Cai Guo-Qiang will give the keynote speech at MIT’s China Forum the same day as the dedication.

I’m sure there’s much else going on at the List Center, too, under its new director, Paul Ha.

Photograph: Courtesy of MIT