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Exhibit highlights modern art
'The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America' at The Phillips Collection reveals the best in modern art
Date published: 11/9/2006
By SHEILA WICKOUSKI For THE FREE LANCE-STAR Marcel Duchamp, the great Dada artist who loved to play with identity, might have enjoyed it if Katherine Drier, his cohort in modern art, had appeared on one of those popular 1950s television panel shows like "I've Got a Secret." Nobody would have guessed that this less-than-stunning woman was indeed the doyenne of the modern art movement in America or predict that her vision and forceful personality would reach across continents and influence art education into the next century. This was, of course, no secret but simply something that was of little interest to the American public, which had a disparaging opinion of the contemporary art scene. Together with Duchamp and Man Ray, Drier had formed the collective "experimental museum of art," known as the Societe Anonyme. From 1920 until 1950, when it dissolved, the Societe Anonyme sought, through exhibitions and educational events, to change public opinion. Its members amassed an impressive collection representative of the best in modern art at the time, which Drier catalogued before the works began to be dispersed, with the bulk of the collection going to the Yale University Art Gallery in 1941. There is, as one might expect in any major collection of modern art in America, a key link to Duncan Phillips. While Phillips focused on the French school and Drier on the German and Russian avant-garde, they nevertheless shared their art finds and their appreciation of them. So, it is most fitting that The Phillips Collection in Washington be a key venue for a historic once-in-a-lifetime tour of selected works from this stellar collection. Included in "The Societe Anonyme: Modernism for America," a show of more than 130 rarely seen works selected from the Drier collection, are pieces unique to the Phillips. As one would expect, included in the show are the works of the 20th-century masters: Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, Piet Mondrian, Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Paul Klee and Fernand Leger. But the work of many unknowns--artists like David Burliuk and Carl Buchheister--also is part of the treasury of experimental art. The collection is truly about the relationships among these artists as recounted in the history of the Societe Anonyme.
Date published: 11/9/2006
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