Exploring the impact of Asian Art and Thought on American Artist
From January 30 to April 19, 2009, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum will present The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860–1989.
The Third Mind is an exhibition that illuminates the dynamic and complex impact of Asian art, literature, music, and philosophical concepts on American art that features approximately 250 works by more than 100 artists across a broad range of media.
Many art works including painting, sculpture, video art, installations, works on paper, film, live performance, literary works, and ephemera; draws from over 100 major museum and private collections in North America, Europe, and Japan.
This exhibition is made possible by a Chairman’s Special Award from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Conceived and organized by Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and a leading authority on Asian art.
The Third Mind proposes a new art-historical construct––one that challenges the widely accepted view that American modern art developed simply as a dialogue with Europe––by focusing on the myriad ways in which vanguard American artists’ engagement with Asian art, literature, music, and philosophical concepts inspired them to forge an independent artistic identity that would define the modern age and the modern mind.
These artists developed a new understanding of existence, nature, and consciousness through their prolonged engagement with Eastern religions (Hinduism, Tantric and Chan/Zen Buddhism, Taoism), classical Asian art forms, and living performance traditions.
Japanese art and Zen Buddhism dominated in part because America’s political and economic ties with Japan were historically stronger than those with China or India, the other prime source nations examined in this exhibition.
The key artists represented in the exhibition include, chronologically: John La Farge, James McNeill Whistler, Mary Cassatt, Arthur Wesley Dow, Georgia O’Keeffe, Augustus Vincent Tack, Ezra Pound, Isamu Noguchi, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, David Smith, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, Jordan Belson, Ad Reinhardt, Anne Truitt, Agnes Martin, Dan Flavin, Walter de Maria, Adrian Piper, Bill Viola, and Tehching Hsieh.
The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia: 1860-1989
On View: January 30-April 19, 2009
Media Preview: Thursday, January 29, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York, NY 10128-0173
Guggenheim Museum – New York
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