JN Fine Arts

Montreal Masterpieces

Mini Renderings

T

The tiny cast bronze sculptures
created by Susan Steele Kaplan
are formed by a lost-wax process.
Though organically inspired, Ka-
plan's delicate works go beyond
nature to an almost
Steelq
sci/fi feel. They are Susan Kaplan
: -
among the pieces Amazon Pod;
featured in 8 X 8, cast bronze.
an exhibit devoted
to works not any larger than
eight inches in any direction.
In the same exhibit, Barbara
Abel's richly colored photographs
are reminiscent of classic, ro-

mantic portraits, particularly Euro-
pean. The artist stages her subjects
for dramatic, elegant and aestheti-
cally strong effects.
The smaller works of 15 artists are
being shown through Aug. 8 at the
Paint Creek Center for the Arts, 407
Pine Street, Rochester. Mixed media,
cast bronze, photos, oil on canvas,
metals and woods have been used to
build these petite forms. (810) 651-
4110.

Barbara Abel:
Waiting,
photograph.

Ann Arbor Acquisition

The 18th-century painting
Judith With the Head of
Holofernes was acquired to
culminate a year-long fund-
raising effort in celebration
of the 50th anniversary of
the University of Michigan
Museum of Art. Painted by
Gaspare Traversi, it depicts
the biblical heroine Judith
with a platter holding the
severed head of the Assyri-
an general Holofernes.
The painting, currently
on display, dates from the
early 1750s, when the artist
cast an arrestingly beauti-
ful young woman in the role
of the Old Testament hero-
ine Judith, who Saved her
people by slaying Holo-
fernes. (313) 764 0395.
Gaspare Traversi: Judith With the Head of

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Holofernes, oil on canvas.

Suzanne Chessler is a freelance writer who compiles and writes
our "Hanging Around" Fine Arts pages. Ifyou have information about
art happenings you wish to have considered for our Fine Arts section,
including show openings and ongoing exhibits, please send your
information, including photos or slides, three weeks prior to pub-
lication date, to Gail Zimmerman, Arts and Entertainment Edi-
tor, c to The Jewish News, 27676 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI
48034; information may be faxed to (810) 354-6069.

he works of three Jewish
artists — Marc Chagall,
Andre Kertesz and Jacques
Lipchitz — are being shown
alongside the works of 20 other in-
ternationally celebrated artists in
the exhibition "Exiles and Emigres:
The Flight of European Artists From
Hitler."
Put together by Stephanie Bar-
ron, curator of 20th-century art and
vice president of education and pub-
lic programs at the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art, the pieces
can be viewed through Sept. 17 at
the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
"I happen to be interested in ex-
hibitions that have social and po-
litical implications," said Barron, who Matta: The Year 44, oil on canvas.
based this project on an earlier one,
"Degenerate Art: The Fate of the
Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany."
`The artists all suffered some type
of persecution, and most of it was po-
litical."
During the six years that Barron
amassed the information now dis-
played in Montreal, she studied the
lives of hundreds of artists, select-
ing the finalists based on the themes
she hoped to cover: artists' activities,
refugees in the United States, help
for artists, exiles from Paris, artists
as teachers and the American re-
ception of banned German art.
This marks the first in-depth ex-
ploration of the artistic impact of em-
igration and forced exile.
Visitors will see 130. paintings,
sculptures, photographs, architec-
tural models, drawings and graph-
ics as well as posters, books, Fernand Leger: The Divers (Red and Black), oil on canvas.
pamphlets, broadsides, letters, news-
papers and journals.
To intensify a sense of the artists' problems
The materials have been assembled from of assimilation into foreign societies, the exhi-
more than 100 public and private collections bition features:
in Europe and North and South America.
• a 15 minute film, America and the Exiles:
U.S. Immigration Policy. and the European
Refugee Crisis, narrated by Ted Danson.
• a 20-foot scale model of Peggy Guggen-
heim's gallery that provided a public forum in
New York City to present the talents of Max
Ernst, Andre Masson, Matta, Yves Tanguy and
many others.
• a walk-in model of Piet Mondrian's New
York studio, which brings neoplasticism (his
idealistic concept of a new society shaped by
aesthetic values) to life. Jazz recordings, re-
flecting Mondrian's love of the musical form
and the pulse of New York City, will be play-
ing in this architectural reconstruction.
. "I wanted to stress the choices the artists
made, and I've found it very satisfying to watch
the public gain this understanding," Barron
said.
Architect Frank 0. Gehry designed the ex-
hibition, which travels to the Neue National-
galerie in Berlin after Canada. ❑

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*& "Exiles and Emigres: The Flight of
'1 European Artists From Hitler" will be on=
display at the Montreal Museum of Fine
Arts through Sept. 7. For information, call
Max Beckmann: The Artists with Vegetables, oil on canvas.
(514) 285-1600.