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Fast Forward: Contemporary Collections for the Dallas Museum of Art
In this handsome book, the Dallas Museum of Art celebrates three remarkable private collections of contemporary art that were donated in 2005, presenting them in context with masterworks already owned by the museum. Featuring over two hundred works, many previously unpublished, by such major artists as Matthew Barney, Joseph Beuys, Louise Bourgeois, Vija Celmins, Philip Guston, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Naumann, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Robert Ryman, Richard Tuttle, and many others, this volume provides a stunning visual history of the critical art movements that have shaped––and continue to shape––contemporary art since the 1940s.
Essays by distinguished scholars discuss the works, which range from sculpture and painting to photography, installation art, and video and electronic media, and address the importance, history, and evolution of Dallas’s collection.
Essays by distinguished scholars discuss the works, which range from sculpture and painting to photography, installation art, and video and electronic media, and address the importance, history, and evolution of Dallas’s collection.
- GenresArt
328 pages, Hardcover
First published April 28, 2007
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 6, 2018
Fantastic collection of modern art, including all the major artists: Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, Joel Shapiro, Frank Stella, Francis Bacon, Lucius Freud and many more. I am now eager to visit the Dallas Museum of Art.
The book is coffee table sized with full-page, color photographs of the work.
The book is coffee table sized with full-page, color photographs of the work.
April 14, 2012
Being the major art-nerd that I am, the DMA served as one of my regular hangout places from late high school to my undergraduate years. Their exhibitions were generally hit-or-miss for me, and Fast Forward was one of their big-budget, big-payoff shows, and one of the more memorable exhibitions I attended. It was one of those shows I went to three or four times and still did not feel like I experienced everything.
The two-part exhibition really showcased some phenomenal works of contemporary art—a breath of fresh air for a young Dallasite thirsty for new stimulating works of art (my best exposure to contemporary art in Dallas growing up were the Rachofsky house and Fort Worth Modern, and neither were very accessible—not to dismiss the DMA or Dallas Contemporary or the art scene at the local galleries.) I still recall the intrigue I felt the first time I encountered one of Robert Gober’s bizarre wax sculptures, and Neil Jenney’s snow paintings that seemed luminescent against those proportionally-massive black picture frames, and the Willie Doherty photo that looked absolutely perfect hanging so low on the wall, almost touching the floor, my first exposure to Sue Williams and Laura Owens which made me reassess my notion that painting was pretty much dead except for the gods of contemporary painting: Gerhard Richter, Richard Patterson, etc. I could go on listing works.
As a catalog, the primary function of this book is to document works of art in the exhibition. In this respect, the catalog seems pretty comprehensive, though I recall seeing a few works at the exhibition not included in the catalog, like that one really clever Ron Mueck piece, I think it’s missing a Sigmar Polke, and a few others (though my memory could be off). And as with many exhibition catalogs, it includes several pieces not included in the exhibition (most of them in the Rachofsky house, or part of the DMA’s permanent collection).
The catalogue mostly corresponds to the way the exhibition groups the works into thematic sections, which from a brand design standpoint conveniently correspond to the DMA’s colors (blue, red, green, pink, orange, brown):
- Action/Reaction—abstract works of “action-painters” from the 50s and 60s, plus some of the “reaction” painters (Johns and Rauschenberg), and a hint of the re-emergence of figuration (Bacon and Freud, I say “hint” because they could have included Alice Neel, Leon Golub, Eric Fischl, etc., if they were really to emphasize the post-war figurative painters, though the figurative paintings in the exhibition were not grouped with the other paintings in the first place—they were grouped with figurative sculpture)
- The Apogee of Abstraction—primarily minimalism, conceptual art, and post-painterly abstraction, but it’s a hodge-podge that includes Celmins, Artschwager, Kusama, and Jenney, and Frances Colpitt’s introductory essay does not really explain how these works fit into the section, in fact it doesn’t even mention them.
- From a Prehistoric Wind—Italian artists: Fontana, Merz, Manzoni, Paolini, Kounellis (Greek, but associated with Italian Arte Povera artists), Pistoletto, Penone, Boetti, and Fabro.
-A German Persistence—as the title implies, the Germans: Richter, Beuys, Struth, Polke (Polish artist), Keifer, etc. I would have loved it if they included newer or less well-known German artists, like John Bock, Jonathan Meese, Timm Ulrichs, or Hanne Darboven, but I can’t complain from the selection and don’t expect them to include these artists.
-From Object to Image: Sculpture, Installation, Media: pretty much everything mentioned in the title (sculpture, installation, and video)—again, a very wide-ranging, disparate collection ranging from Cornell’s diorama-esque objects to Tony Smith, to Doug Aitkin
-The Territories of Art: this last section consists of artists whose careers started in the 80s to the present. María de Corral’s introductory essay tries to trace some of the trends, but merely reinforces a lot of the clichés about art in the 80s and 90s set up by Hal Foster’s anti-aesthetic. The 90s to the present really mark a fragmentary period where no art object seems emblematic of its era.
María de Corral’s opening line, “Collecting is a matter of choosing” really embodies all this exhibition is about. It does not hide the fact that it basically showcases a culmination of the big Dallas collections of contemporary art, which makes this show unique. In fact the catalog often feels like an advertisement glorifying the patronage of wealthy art collectors in Dallas. I wish the catalog would focus more on the works themselves, less on who contributed to the collection. However, it serves as a reminder of where these works come from and the economic conditions that make them possible.
The two-part exhibition really showcased some phenomenal works of contemporary art—a breath of fresh air for a young Dallasite thirsty for new stimulating works of art (my best exposure to contemporary art in Dallas growing up were the Rachofsky house and Fort Worth Modern, and neither were very accessible—not to dismiss the DMA or Dallas Contemporary or the art scene at the local galleries.) I still recall the intrigue I felt the first time I encountered one of Robert Gober’s bizarre wax sculptures, and Neil Jenney’s snow paintings that seemed luminescent against those proportionally-massive black picture frames, and the Willie Doherty photo that looked absolutely perfect hanging so low on the wall, almost touching the floor, my first exposure to Sue Williams and Laura Owens which made me reassess my notion that painting was pretty much dead except for the gods of contemporary painting: Gerhard Richter, Richard Patterson, etc. I could go on listing works.
As a catalog, the primary function of this book is to document works of art in the exhibition. In this respect, the catalog seems pretty comprehensive, though I recall seeing a few works at the exhibition not included in the catalog, like that one really clever Ron Mueck piece, I think it’s missing a Sigmar Polke, and a few others (though my memory could be off). And as with many exhibition catalogs, it includes several pieces not included in the exhibition (most of them in the Rachofsky house, or part of the DMA’s permanent collection).
The catalogue mostly corresponds to the way the exhibition groups the works into thematic sections, which from a brand design standpoint conveniently correspond to the DMA’s colors (blue, red, green, pink, orange, brown):
- Action/Reaction—abstract works of “action-painters” from the 50s and 60s, plus some of the “reaction” painters (Johns and Rauschenberg), and a hint of the re-emergence of figuration (Bacon and Freud, I say “hint” because they could have included Alice Neel, Leon Golub, Eric Fischl, etc., if they were really to emphasize the post-war figurative painters, though the figurative paintings in the exhibition were not grouped with the other paintings in the first place—they were grouped with figurative sculpture)
- The Apogee of Abstraction—primarily minimalism, conceptual art, and post-painterly abstraction, but it’s a hodge-podge that includes Celmins, Artschwager, Kusama, and Jenney, and Frances Colpitt’s introductory essay does not really explain how these works fit into the section, in fact it doesn’t even mention them.
- From a Prehistoric Wind—Italian artists: Fontana, Merz, Manzoni, Paolini, Kounellis (Greek, but associated with Italian Arte Povera artists), Pistoletto, Penone, Boetti, and Fabro.
-A German Persistence—as the title implies, the Germans: Richter, Beuys, Struth, Polke (Polish artist), Keifer, etc. I would have loved it if they included newer or less well-known German artists, like John Bock, Jonathan Meese, Timm Ulrichs, or Hanne Darboven, but I can’t complain from the selection and don’t expect them to include these artists.
-From Object to Image: Sculpture, Installation, Media: pretty much everything mentioned in the title (sculpture, installation, and video)—again, a very wide-ranging, disparate collection ranging from Cornell’s diorama-esque objects to Tony Smith, to Doug Aitkin
-The Territories of Art: this last section consists of artists whose careers started in the 80s to the present. María de Corral’s introductory essay tries to trace some of the trends, but merely reinforces a lot of the clichés about art in the 80s and 90s set up by Hal Foster’s anti-aesthetic. The 90s to the present really mark a fragmentary period where no art object seems emblematic of its era.
María de Corral’s opening line, “Collecting is a matter of choosing” really embodies all this exhibition is about. It does not hide the fact that it basically showcases a culmination of the big Dallas collections of contemporary art, which makes this show unique. In fact the catalog often feels like an advertisement glorifying the patronage of wealthy art collectors in Dallas. I wish the catalog would focus more on the works themselves, less on who contributed to the collection. However, it serves as a reminder of where these works come from and the economic conditions that make them possible.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews