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Akagawa wins McKnight Distinguished Artist Award

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Kinji Akagawa, a sculptor whose work is in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, was just honored by the McKnight Foundation for his four decades as a Minnesota-based sculptor and public artist. As its 2007 McKnight Distinguished Artist, Akagawa will receive a $40,000 prize and recognition for his work as “a model Minnesota artist,” in the words [...]

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Kinji Akagawa, a sculptor whose work is in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, was just honored by the McKnight Foundation for his four decades as a Minnesota-based sculptor and public artist. As its 2007 McKnight Distinguished Artist, Akagawa will receive a $40,000 prize and recognition for his work as “a model Minnesota artist,” in the words of McKnight board chair Erika Binger.

His sculpture Garden Seating, Reading, Thinking, commisioned for the 1988 opening of the Walker’s sculpture garden, is a good example of his notion of public art’s focus on “pluralistic activities and the ecology of everyday experiences.” A bench made from locally sourced cedar, green basalt, and granite, the piece offers visitors a place to stop, think, and relax. “I made the piece, but not just as a bench for physical rest. Intellectually, you have to rest within that kind of context; emotionally, you have to rest looking at all the sculpture,” he says. “I used familiar, Midwestern materials: fieldstone and basalt from St. Croix. The bench provides psychological rest, intellectual rest, and physical rest.”

The piece, like much of his recent work, melds the elegance and simplicity of the traditional aesthetics from his Japanese background with the specifics of a particular public space: how it is used, where it is located, and how an artist can intervene there. “The world is dysfunctional,” Akagawa says, “but artists try to make it functional by interpreting it.”

According to the Star Tribune, Akagawa’s got plans for the prize funds:

The award includes $40,000 from the McKnight Foundation. Akagawa plans to use it for two long-dreamed of projects. He intends to travel to Scandinavia with his wife, artist Nancy Gipple, to study buildings by Finnish architect-designer Alvar Aalto, whose elegant wood-and-glass structures are reflected in Akagawa’s own work.

He also plans to build a little “study house” for his boxes, benches, furniture and other creations, “like a tea house, which is a Japanese tradition for moon viewing. It is a little bit of poetry in a kind of dwelling, and I’ve thought that if I have a little bit of money I might do it in my back yard.”

A longtime Walker member who has collaborated with the Walker’s visual arts and education departments (for the Walker’s 1986 Tokyo Form and Spirit show he transformed the Art Lab into a Japanese studio), Akagawa is also an educator: since 1973, he has been a professor of fine arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He’s been in Minnesota since 1967 and lives in Afton.

From all of us at the Walker, congratulations, Kinji.

The Man Who Possessed Modernity

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Mark Stevens, critic and co-author (with his wife, Annalyn Swan) of the book de Kooning: An American Master, wrote the following review for New York magazine for the Whitney’s showing of Picasso and American Art. With the exhibition’s Minneapolis debut, June 16 through September 9, Stevens and New York have allowed us to adapt and [...]

7750600.jpgMark Stevens, critic and co-author (with his wife, Annalyn Swan) of the book de Kooning: An American Master, wrote the following review for New York magazine for the Whitney’s showing of Picasso and American Art. With the exhibition’s Minneapolis debut, June 16 through September 9, Stevens and New York have allowed us to adapt and reprint his essay in the May/June issue of Walker magazine.

In the thirties, the obscure painters who would one day transform American art liked to spend the night in shabby New York cafeterias discussing art over nickel cups of coffee. The subject was painting, all painting. They talked about the painters of the past, Uccello, Piero, Michelangelo; about the pioneering modernists, especially Cézanne; about their great near contemporaries, Mir, Matisse, Mondrian. But the artist they talked about the most–the one who seemed to drink their coffee before they did–was Picasso. Not because he was the biggest or best: others were arguably as important. But the others kept to their games, working within boundaries. They did not possess modernity itself. They did not, like the omnivorous Spaniard, seem to fall upon and ravish every corner of the modern world. They were inspiring uncles, not a devouring father.

Picasso and American Art is an ambitious examination of how this great father-monster shaped the modern American imagination. The way serious artists influence one another is always a subtle and complex subject, especially when the interplay occurs, as it does here, among strong, independent figures rather than between a leader and his followers. In an exhibit where space is limited and curators cannot display less-visible forms of influence, such as the moral or personal sway of an artist, the focus inevitably narrows. Picasso and American Art juxtaposes paintings–it does so brilliantly. Those who like to look closely at individual works will savor the show, entering a state of compare-and-contrast bliss. And, more mysteriously, they may gain a better sense of what’s peculiarly American.

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Book, Art: Two favorites from Paper Trail

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One of the gems on display at the Walker now is Paper Trail, a great but low-profile showcase of works on paper added to the Permanent Collection in the last decade. Among standout works by Amy Cutler, Glenn Ligon, Adrian Piper, Thomas Hirschhorn, Santiago Cucullu, and Elizabeth Peyton (who did a sweet portrait of Rirkrit [...]

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zak.jpgOne of the gems on display at the Walker now is Paper Trail, a great but low-profile showcase of works on paper added to the Permanent Collection in the last decade. Among standout works by Amy Cutler, Glenn Ligon, Adrian Piper, Thomas Hirschhorn, Santiago Cucullu, and Elizabeth Peyton (who did a sweet portrait of Rirkrit Tiravanija as a boy) is Olafur Eliasson‘s Your House, a hand-bound, editioned laser-cut book that renders the negative space of the artist’s house at a scale of 85:1.

Zak Smith‘s 2004 book-inspired piece, Pictures of What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, is also in the show. Just as the title says, the work features one drawing for each of the 755 pages of Pynchon’s thick tome (detail at right). Smith’s drawings are now compiled in a book of his own: Pictures Showing What Happens on Each Page of Thomas Pynchon’s Novel Gravity’s Rainbow. At the Amazon.com listing for the book, Minneapolis resident J. Vculek makes a plug for the Walker’s show:

If you live anywhere near Minneapolis get yourself over to the Walker Art Center, where every single one of Zak Smith’s drawings/paintings/sculptures (yes, some are three dimensional) for this project are displayed on one wall. (All are in the permanent collection of the Walker.) How do I know it’s all 750+ artworks? Because I counted. 45 columns by 17 rows. You could spend hours staring at them and not exhaust this monumental project. I’m not sure how long they’ll remain on display so don’t put it off.

The answer to that last question: Paper Trail closes September 23.

Update: Taylor finds this shot of Smith’s Walker installation, winner of a Beautiful Capture Award, on Flickr.

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Frank Gaard on breaking free from Picasso

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Minneapolis-based painter Frank Gaard, whose work is on view in the current exhibition Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions, shared his thoughts in an upcoming issue of Walker magazine on Pablo Picasso’s influence on his work. With the opening of Picasso and American Art just over a week away, here’s what he had to say: [...]

Minneapolis-based painter Frank Gaard, whose work is on view in the current exhibition Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions, shared his thoughts in an upcoming issue of Walker magazine on Pablo Picasso’s influence on his work. With the opening of Picasso and American Art just over a week away, here’s what he had to say:

“ Most of my pals in high school called me Pablo or Picasso even in signing the yearbook. Steve wrote me from Viet Nam as Pablo. Breaking free of Picasso’s pervasive influence was a concern. His pop image was often like the clown who entertains the aristocrats with his foolish antics. Some of the artists Picasso had influenced were of interest in our younger art school days–Matta, Wilfredo Lam, and most of all Arshile Gorky. Most importantly perhaps Pollock and de Kooning seemed to remain deeply taken with Picasso, so much so that Pollock really never broke through til he abandoned Picasso. It was Pop Art that changed everything: art became fun and less European. At least we could proceed as if the water had been changed in the bath tub and Pablo was down the drain. The influence of Picasso’s diminished stature was the birthplace of my art when the School of Paris gave way to Andy Warhol’s Factory.”