GUEST LECTURE by Dr. Frances Beatty for the exhibition
From BMC to NYC: The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson (1943-1967)
Friday, May 21, 7:00 p.m.
$7 / $5 BMCM+AC members + students w/ID
Dr. Frances F. L. Beatty, Ph.D., Columbia University, Vice President of Richard L. Feigen & Co. and Director of the Ray Johnson Estate in New York City, will speak about the famously eccentric artist Ray Johnson and his work on Friday, May 21st at 7:00 p.m. at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center in downtown Asheville. Ms. Beatty's presentation will touch on Johnson's unusual attitude towards exhibiting his work and her relationship with the complicated artist. Her lecture will include a discussion about Ray Johnson's early works from Black Mountain College to the first installation of his Early Pop moticos as well as his exhibitions in the 1970’s and how Johnson made it virtually impossible to show his work from 1980 to his death. This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition From BMC to NYC: The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson (1943-1967) at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) through June 12th, 2010. Dr. Beatty’s lecture is just one of many programs accompanying the show. A 48-page exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase at the lecture.
A seminal Pop Art figure, Ray Johnson has been called the most significant "unknown artist" of the post-war period, a "collagist extraordinaire" who influenced Pop artists such as Andy Warhol and Keith Haring, as well as a generation of contemporary artists. Since his death, however, Johnson has emerged not only as a key member of the 1960's generation but also as a major artistic innovator of the second-half of the 20th century.
Black Mountain College—in particular, Johnson’s first teacher, Josef Albers—was a critical factor in Johnson’s development as an artist. Indeed, Johnson’s time at the college can be viewed in retrospect as a platform from which he dove into Manhattan and its vibrant art world. Our exhibition will explore the ways that many of Johnson’s early tutelary influences, both the people and the places, helped create his unique vision. Throughout his career, Johnson always found ways to engage those around him—mentors, friends and strangers alike—in a correspondence “dance” of collage, letter writing and interactive performance art. Following in Marcel Duchamp’s footsteps, Johnson, as one art critic put it, “introduced life into art.”
Through a carefully selected group of paintings, collages and early correspondence, From BMC to NYC: The Tutelary Years of Ray Johnson will explore the early transitions in Johnson’s career—in particular his graduation from high school in Detroit to his three years of serious study at Black Mountain College to his immersion in the Manhattan art scene of the 1950s and 1960s. From BMC to NYC, curated by writer and collage artist Sebastian Matthews, will trace a circle around roughly two decades of Johnson’s early art, creating a spotlight on his explosion from talented painter and master collagist to, by the 1960s, Grand Dean of Dada & Postal Art. The exhibition will provide an interactive, playful presentation of Johnson’s “tutelary” work, highlighting the people and places that influenced Johnson’s creations in order to give the viewer a roadmap of Johnson’s creative process.
Citation:
Hazel Larsen Archer
Untitled (back of Ray's head)
ca. 1945-48
Vintage gelatin silver print
10 x 7 inches
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Collection
