Presented by Thomas Crow, Nancy Troy, and Richard Shiff
Tuesday, May 28, 2002
7:00 p.m.
Harold M. Williams Auditorium
This public discussion brings together three noted art historians
to talk about the reflections of four visual artists at the end
of their careers: Mark Rothko, Piet Mondrian, Paul Cézanne,
and Willem de Kooning.
Thomas Crow, Director of the Getty Research Institute, discusses
the last thoughts of Rothko, looking particularly at his late paintings
with their darker tones, muted hues, and simplified forms, which
seem readily to correlate with the facts of his personal decline
and eventual suicide. In consideration of Rothko's last thoughts,
Crow probes a number of questions, including: Is biography a sufficient
explanation for the changes in Rothko's art? In what ways do these
changes sustain interest independent of our empathy with the artist's
life experience?
Nancy Troy, Chair of the Department of Art History at the University
of Southern California, examines the final work of Mondrian as a
representation of his last thoughts by considering the significance
of the New York studio that Mondrian created and lived in during
the last few months before his death. Troy explores the various
media in which that space outlived the artist through hybrid representations
including fashion photographs, furniture designs, and posthumously
produced works that resist definition as documents and as art objects.
Richard Shiff, the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art in the
Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas, Austin,
discusses both Cézanne and de Kooning. He considers the impact
of Cézanne's failing health on his work at the end of his
life and asserts that because the artist knew he had limited time
he increased the intensity of his works during his final years,
expressing impatience and
dissatisfaction with criticism, aesthetic theory, and modern times
in general. Schiff examines Cézanne's last documented thoughts
including, "I am the primitive of my way." In contrast
to Cézanne, de Kooning lived much longer, into his early
nineties, long enough to lose his mental agility, but without necessarily
losing his capacity to paint creatively. Shiff explores the possibility
that de Kooning's "last thoughts" were
perhaps expressed only visually, without the artist's ever translating
them into words.
This panel is presented in concurrence with the Ojai Music Festival,
which also explores the question of Artists' Last Thoughts from
the perspective of musicians. For more information on the Ojai Festival
please call (805) 646-2053.
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