Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art
July 26, 2011
Adolf Konrad, packing list, December 16, 1963
The exhibition “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art,” currently on display at The Morgan Library & Museum, gathers together a diverse and exceedingly compelling group of documents. Taken all together, these pieces provide insight into the organizational mechanisms that certain artists put in place to facilitate both their professional and personal lives. Arturo Rodríguez’s visual list of kinds of paintbrushes (1978), which also details in writing the properties of each one, reveals a punctiliousness at odds with images of creativity such the one shown here: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Arts/Arts_/Pictures/2008/09/05/ba460.jpg. Also, Philip Evergood’s résumé (1959), covered with both typed and handwritten additions, provides boisterous and concrete evidence of a thriving career. Of all the items on display, Adolf Konrad’s singular and thoroughly absorbing visual packing list (1963) exercises the strongest aesthetic appeal. The exhibition, overall, grippingly speaks to the need of each individual, whether an artist or not, to make sense of his or her world.
For further information on this exhibit, please visit https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/exhibition.asp?id=53
For further information on the artists mentioned in this post, please visit the following websites:
http://www.arturorodriguezart.com/
http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/philip_evergood/
http://www.askart.com/AskART/artists/search/ArtistKeywords.aspx?artist=85092
