New on View
The Twentieth-Century Galleries,
Reconsidered and Reconfigured
Like most who build art collections based on passion, John and Dominique de Menil began with the time and place in which they lived. Here at the Menil we have been given a legacy born not only from the founders’ interests and experiences—in Surrealism in Paris and Abstract Expressionism in New York—but also from their passion for the art of ancient cultures, Africa, and Pacific peoples, as well as the image of the black in Western art. Today, the museum’s collection continues to grow from these broad and expansive philosophies and from the same spirit of liveliness that characterized the collecting interests of the de Menils in their lifetimes.
As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century and the after effects of modernism recede from view, the Menil has now taken a less modernist approach to its presentation of modern and contemporary. Not burdened by the encyclopedic raison d’etre of larger museums, the Menil, in galleries relocated to the east wing of the museum, is now devoting space to twentieth-century art that begins after 1945.
Two large works at the end of the corridor mark the entrance to the galleries: from 1968, an enormous felt wall hanging by Robert Morris, and, from 2002, Martin Puryear’s pine sculpture, Deadeye.
The first gallery, installed in collaboration with the artist Robert Gober, recalls the Menil’s renowned Surrealism galleries, with a group of Gober’s own works (a chair, a lightbulb; stacks of newspapers; a beeswax block of Swiss cheese sprouting human hair; and a trompe l’oeil prison window) that are mixed with objects selected from the Menil’s storage rooms, including a wax bust of Abraham Lincoln, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s 1965 mirror painting titled Vietnam, and Rene Magritte’s painting of a bleeding rifle, The Survivor (1950). Threads of Surrealism, religion and political activism – which were powerful and abiding de Menil interests – run through the entire installation. And while glancing back at the Menil’s Surrealist holdings, the Gober room also looks forward to further possibilities for selectively building the collection in the twenty-first century.
Pop art by Andy Warhol (including his portrait of Chairman Mao and the electric-chair montage of Lavender Disaster, 1963), Jim Dine’s 3-Panel Study for Child’s Room (1962) and a signature white-plaster figure by George Segal (Seated Woman, 1967) together act as a bridge to the more political, conceptual, and contemporary aspects of the installation.
The story continues in a gallery devoted to several works by Robert Rauschenberg, including a 1961 “combine,” Third-Time Painting, and Jasper Johns, including a seminal 1963 work, Periscope (Hart Crane). The next two galleries showcase new developments in the post-World War II landscape of America, with single rooms dedicated to Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman.
Post-painterly abstraction forms what might be called the last chapter of the current story and the beginning of the next, with significant works by Brice Marden and David Novros, two artists with deep connections to the collection and to Rothko (with whom they showed in 1975 at the de Menil-supported Rice University Art Museum). Marden and Novros share this final gallery with Robert Ryman’s Midland II (1976) and a 1978 work by Robert Mangold, A Curved Diagonal within Two Distorted Rectangles.
Robert Gober Untitled, 2005
Beeswax and human hair 5-5/8 x 20-5/8 x 6-5/16 (including hair extended fully) inches
The Menil Collection, Houston
Hester + Hardaway Photographers
Andy Warhol Self-Portrait with Skull, 1978
Acrylic and silkscreen enamel on canvas 16 x 13 inches
The Menil Collection, Houston, gift of the artist Photo: Paul Hester, Houston
© 2009 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Mark Rothko Untitled, 1957
Oil on canvas 93 x 80 inches
The Menil Collection, Houston, gift of Louisa Stude Sarofim in honor of Mr. and Mrs. James A. Elkins, Jr. Photo: George Hixson
© 2009 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Robert Rauschenberg Untitled (Gold Painting), 1956
Gold leaf, wood, fabric, and cardboard in wood and glass frame 10-1/2 x 10-7/8 x 1-1/2 inches
The Menil Collection, Houston, given in memory of Dominique de Menil by Susan and Francois de Menil and their family Photo: Hickey-Robertson, Houston
Michelangelo Pistoletto Vietnam, 1965
Graphite and oil on cut transparent paper mounted on polished stainless steel
86-5/8 x 47-1/4 x 7/8 inches
The Menil Collection, Houston Photo: George Hixson, Houston
Courtesy of the artist, Luhring Augustine, New York and Galleria Christian Stein, Milan