Société Anonyme

I got a very early start to my day today, which left me time to finally make it over to the Frist Center, in downtown Nashville, to check out the Société Anonyme: Modernism for America show. The show has been up for quite awhile, and actually closes for good on Sunday...so I was very happy to have just made it in time!

Société Anonyme was organized in 1920 by Katherine Dreier, Marcel Duchamp, and Man Ray, as a vehicle to promote modern art in America. They held exhibitions, concerts, and lectures that included some incredible artists—Jean Arp, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, and Kurt Schwitters, to name a few.

I saw so many beautiful and inspiring things today. I, of course, couldn't take photos in the actual exhibition, but below are some images from the exhibition catalog, (on sale for $22 in the Frist Center shop!)

Lithographs by Jean Arp.

There were several dimensional collages by Kurt Schwitters—a few were small scale made with layers of cut paper (left,) and others were much larger assemblages of wood and paint (right.)

Some of my favorite pieces in the show were actually flyers, posters, books, and magazines produced for Société Anonyme—I can't resist all that gorgeous typography.

Cover of Broom, by El Lissitzky, 1923. Check out that February in the 3.

If you are in the Nashville area this weekend I highly recommend seeing this show. Otherwise you can find out more about the Société Anonyme at the Yale University Art Gallery website, (the exhibition was organized by Yale and is heading back there to be shown again in the fall of 2010.) Have a lovely weekend friends!

Comments

[shari]

hi kathleen. i saw this exhibit in dc and loved it. it was very inspiring. hope you are well. xo

[joanna goddard]

love these. xo

[Gina]

I've chosen you for the Excellent Blog Award (which is probably surprising because I never comment on your blog, but I do subscribe!) If you'd like to participate, check out my January 29th post: http://plentitude.blogspot.com/2008/01/thanks.html

[greenolive]

Ah, a walk done memory lane. I haven't thought about El Lissitzky since my collage days studying graphic design. You just can't beat good typographical design can you?