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MAIN GALLERY Apr 10, 2015 - Jun 28, 2015

Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris

  • Press Release

    Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris

Jacob Ferdinand Voet, //Portrait de femme vue de face//, 1639-1700, Colored pencil on blue paper. 22.5 X 16 cm

The Drawing Center has commissioned artists Ryan and Trevor Oakes to use the exhibition Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris as a platform to further explore the genre of portraiture.

For eight consecutive Thursdays during May 7–June 25th, 2015 from 12–8 PM, the artists will be in residence in our Main Gallery. Please click here for details of how you can participate.

This exhibition explores four hundred years of portrait drawings, emphasizing work from live models. Each week, a different set of four portraits from different centuries and with different formal qualities will be hung "in dialogue" with each other in a specially-built room located in the center of The Drawing Center’s Main Gallery. Forty portraits have been chosen from the Beaux-Arts de Paris' collection based on diverse criteria such as the male and female gestures, caricature, frontal gaze, social class, and profession of the model. The room is inspired by the intimate gallery at the Galleria Doria Pamphilj in Rome where Velazquez’s portrait of Pope Innocent X (c.1649) hangs, which only accommodates a small number of visitors at a time and was designed to provide a space for close viewing and contemplation without crowds. The remaining thirty-six portraits in the exhibition will be hung on the gallery's back wall and will be visible to the visitor throughout the exhibition's run.

This unique exhibition will explore the notion of drawn portraiture and provide alternative readings of this important genre of art making within a contemporary context. The selection of works is extensive, ranging from seventeenth-century to the present. Highlights include never-before-exhibited drawings by nineteenth-century luminaries Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Charles Garnier to the work of modern and contemporary masters Henri Matisse and Georg Baselitz to portraits by recent graduates of the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

Co-curated by Emmanuelle Brugerolles, Curator of the Drawings collection at the Beaux-Arts de Paris and Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center.

Lead support for Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts comes from Canson. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Robert Lehman Foundation, Ildeko and Gilbert Butler, Catherine and Arthur Williams, Diane Nixon, David Tobey, Elizabeth Eveillard, the Kress Family Foundation, and Jill Newhouse.

Image: Jacob Ferdinand Voet, Portrait de femme vue de face, 1639-1700, Colored pencil on blue paper. 22.5 X 16 cm

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  • Jacob Ferdinand Voet, Portrait de femme vue de face, 1639-1700, Colored pencil on blue paper. 22.5 X 16 cm

  • Georg Baselitz (b. Deutschbaselitz, 1938 – ). Sans titre (Marcel Duchamp) [Untitled (Marcel Duchamp)], 2001. Pen, India ink, and wash of India ink, 778 x 575 mm. Inv. no. EBA 5367. Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie.

  • Gian Lorenzo Bernini (b. Naples, 1598 – d. Rome, 1680). Portrait d’Agostino Mascardi (Portrait of Agostino Mascardi). Black chalk, red chalk, and highlights of white chalk, 262 x 192 mm. Inv. No. EBA 435. Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. © Beaux-arts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie.

  • André Dutertre (b. Paris, 1753 – d. Paris, 1842). Portrait de l'aide de camp de Mourad Bey (Portrait of Murad Bey’s aide-de-camp). Charcoal, 522 x 374 mm. Inv. No. PC 11155-47a. Paris, Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. © Beauxarts de Paris/T. Ollivier/J.-M. Lapelerie.

  • Claire Tabouret (b. Pertuis, 1981 – ). Les Débutantes.1 (The debutantes.1), 2014. Acrylic and vinyl paint on paper, 610 x 460 mm. Private collection.