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About Peter Mears

Mears oversaw a collection of artwork from the Americas, Asia and Europe. He worked with staff in all departments to provide patrons access to the art collection and served as a liaison to faculty and students in the University\'s Department of Art and Art History.

African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club

March 16, 2016 - Peter Mears

Dean Mitchell (b. 1957). Illustration for Maya Angelou's "Music, Deep Rivers in my Soul" (2003). Copyright Dean Mitchell.

The stories I selected span three decades and show (Zora Neal) Hurston’s diversity in writing styles and subject matter. I created my illustrations from fragments of fabric, paper and faded photos. The layering of images, patterns and textures evoke the feeling of memory and old tales retold. So they become, like the stories, “Bookmarks in the Pages of Life.”—Betye Saar, artist’s afterword to Bookmarks in the Pages of Life [Read more…] about African American artists and writers in the Limited Editions Club

Filed Under: Art, Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: African-American, artists, Authors, Benny Andrews, Betye Saar, Dean Mitchell, Flannery O’Connor, George Macy, illustrators, Jacob Lawrence, Jazz, Limited Editions Club, literature, Maya Angelou, poetry, Richard Wright, Romare Bearden, serigraph, Sid Shiff, silkscreen

Rediscovering the art of Frank Reaugh

August 18, 2015 - Peter Mears

Companion publication Windows on the West: The Art of Frank Reaugh (University of Texas Press and Harry Ransom Center) Edited by Ransom Center Art Curator Peter Mears

From August 4 through November 29, 2015, the Harry Ransom Center hosts the exhibition Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West. The showcase displays over 100 artworks by renowned artist Frank Reaugh (pronounced “Ray”). To complement the exhibition, a companion book is available titled Windows on the West, The Art of Frank Reaugh, edited by Curator of Art Peter F. Mears. The excerpt below is Mears’s introduction to the book, titled “Rediscovering the Art of Frank Reaugh.” In it, he describes Reaugh’s life, vision, and legacy as one of Texas’s most iconic artists.  [Read more…] about Rediscovering the art of Frank Reaugh

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events Tagged With: exhibition, Frank Reaugh, Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West, landscapes, painting, pastels, Peter Mears, southwest, Texas, Windows on the West

Occupy Wall Street 1939 AD

December 13, 2011 - Peter Mears

“1939 A.D. [Jesus on Wall Street].”

A bearded and robed figure, whip in hand, chases well-healed bankers and brokers in top hats down Wall Street. Their retreat, a frenzied stampede of cash, coins and streaming ticker tape, is followed by ranks of protestors carrying signs and banners reading, “Democracy,” “Racial Equality,” “Social Security,” and “Right to Work.” Elizabeth Olds’ lithographic print, 1939 AD, a modern reinterpretation of a famous biblical story, resonates today as it did almost three-quarters of a century ago during the Great Depression when millions of American workers struggled to make ends meet in a decaying economy. Olds’s satirical print, along with 11 other lithographs of the same time period (1934–1939), were reissued in 1986 as A Celebratory Portfolio to commemorate the artist’s 90th birthday. Her portfolio, a potent reminder of a dark period in America’s economic history, serves as a graphic example and tribute to the innovative arts programs established by President Roosevelt’s New Deal government under which Olds created and produced her prints.

Born in Minneapolis in 1896, Elizabeth Olds studied architecture at the University of Minnesota beginning in 1916 and later attended the Minneapolis School of Arts on scholarship. In 1921, she was awarded her second scholarship to attend the progressive Art Students’ League where she studied under painter George Luks, who became her mentor. Guided by Luks, Olds honed her drawing skills while on sketching trips throughout New York City’s ethnic neighborhoods. She also learned how to execute a portrait on these trips in the direct, vigorous style of the Ashcan School of which Luks was a member. In 1925, Olds traveled to Europe with financial assistance from friends, and in 1926, she became the first woman to secure a Guggenheim Traveling Fellowship, which enabled her to continue her studies in Europe until 1929.

An internship at a commercial printing company in the early 1930s—a time of transition for the artist—gave Olds the opportunity to become proficient in lithography. Inspired also by the Mexican muralists of the time, particularly José Clemente Orozco, Olds aligned her subject matter and style to make art that she considered “vital” and purposeful. In an interview with the Omaha World Tribune in 1935, Olds explained her artistic intentions:

“American artists have lately chosen to portray our own life. We find our subject on the streets, in the factory, the machines and workers of industry and on the farm. We aim to picture truly the life about us as the people we are in reference to the forces that make us. We choose all sides of life, searching for the vital and significant. What the artist says through his pictures is the important thing, not how it is done. …”

Thanks to the support of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), established in 1935 and its special programs such as the Federal Arts Program and the Public Works of Art Program, Olds maintained steady employment and utilized her printmaking skills to produce a number of deeply moving images, many of which are included in A Celebratory Portfolio. Olds focused primarily on the labor movement of the time period. Meat processing workers, coal miners, and steel workers were some of her favorite subjects as their working class ranks harbored many of the unemployed. Giving a gentle nod to the art of caricature, other more humorous works in the portfolio comment on the various social stereotypes found in Sidewalk Engineers, The Nun’s Union Demands Shorter Hours for Prayer, and the regimented ranks of the White Collar Boys. In A Sacred Profession is Open to College Graduates, Olds, a college graduate, fully sympathizes with the fears and trepidations of all college students confronting a weak job market.

Elizabeth Olds maintained a productive career throughout her long life before her death in 1991. Her pioneering work in printmaking showed how commercial lithography and silkscreen printing had the potential to become fine art forms. Over time, her interests, always socially conscious, focused more and more on the natural world as she moved from representation to abstraction and back again as easily as she could ride a horse (while studying in Europe she was a trick bareback rider in a Parisian circus). Olds has been the subject of critical essays on modern art and the women’s movement in art. Her work is found in the collections of The Brooklyn Museum; The Museum of Modern Art; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Minneapolis Museum of Arts; the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the Ransom Center.

Please click on thumbnails to view larger images.

Two Owls. 1938. 12 1/8” x 16”
Two Owls. 1938. 12 1/8” x 16”
The Nuns Union Demands Shorter Hours for Prayer. 1935–1945. 11” x 17”
The Nuns Union Demands Shorter Hours for Prayer. 1935–1945. 11” x 17”
A Sacred Profession is Open to College Graduates. 1936. 9 ¾” x 12 ¾”
A Sacred Profession is Open to College Graduates. 1936. 9 ¾” x 12 ¾”
“1939 A.D. [Jesus on Wall Street].”
“1939 A.D. [Jesus on Wall Street].”
Sidewalk Engineers. 1936. 9” x 13
Sidewalk Engineers. 1936. 9” x 13
Forging Axles. 1937–1939. 12 5/8” x 19”
Forging Axles. 1937–1939. 12 5/8” x 19”
Bootleg Coal, Pennsylvania. 1936. 9 7/8” x 14”
Bootleg Coal, Pennsylvania. 1936. 9 7/8” x 14”
Miss Manchester’s Program for Homeless Men. 1936. 10 ¼ x 15 ¼”
Miss Manchester’s Program for Homeless Men. 1936. 10 ¼ x 15 ¼”
White Collar Boys. ca. 1935–1936. 11” x 14 ¾”
White Collar Boys. ca. 1935–1936. 11” x 14 ¾”
Unemployed Line, Omaha, Nebraska. 1935. 8 7/8” x 16”
Unemployed Line, Omaha, Nebraska. 1935. 8 7/8” x 16”
The Knocker. 1934. 11 ¾” x 8 ¼”
The Knocker. 1934. 11 ¾” x 8 ¼”
Tailor at Salvation Army, Omaha, Nebraska. 1934. 10 7/8” x 12 ¾”
Tailor at Salvation Army, Omaha, Nebraska. 1934. 10 7/8” x 12 ¾”

Image: “1939 A.D. [Jesus on Wall Street].”

Filed Under: Art

European popular imagery collection now accessible online

June 1, 2010 - Peter Mears

Unidentified (German). Patiens cornuta mulier. Die geduldige Hanreyin. (The patient cuckolded woman), 17th century. Engraving and etching. Satire on the cuckolded woman who married a much younger husband, with verses in Latin and German. An old woman, with horns growing out of her head, rides on a huge rooster. In the background to the left, her husband is wooing a younger woman, and to the right he is beating his complaining wife.

Spanning the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries, the Ransom Center’s European popular imagery collection is now fully accessible online via two sources: the Center’s finding aid and ARTstor’s nonprofit digital library.

The Ransom Center’s online finding aid includes descriptive text derived from collector’s notes and a lengthy subject index. Each record in the finding aid also includes a link to the related image. ARTstor’s digital library provides advanced search functions and the ability to group selected images for PowerPoint display in classrooms, with images at high resolution.

The invention of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the resultant cultural phenomenon called “Popular Imagery” is a perfect example of cause and effect. Like printed words, unlimited reproductions of images helped bring about the development of a new visual language in early European society and a burgeoning cultural renaissance. The broad scope of the collection, whose origins include nine European countries, illustrate this fact. Prints make up the bulk of the popular imagery collection, with 686 intaglios (including 17 mezzotints), 115 woodcuts, one wood engraving, and six lithographs. Researchers will find an abundance of subjects, from political satire on kings, rulers, revolution, and war to social satire on gender, marriage, and domestic life; from religious studies and their allegorical themes on vice and virtue to numerous motifs on “The Ages of Man,” and “The Dance Macabre” or “Dance of Death.” Great moments in science and technology are visually well-represented in the collection, as are entertaining designs for buildings, board games, and signs of the Zodiac.

While some of the works in this collection were created anonymously—often to protect the creator from ridicule, incarceration, or worse—the collection also includes imagery by many significant artists of the time period, including Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), Hans Holbein (1497–1543) and Lucas Cranach, the Younger (1515–1586).

Please click the thumbnails to view full-size images.

 

Battista Parmensis (Italian, b. 1541) Il mondo alla riversa (The world in reverse), 1585. Engraving. Scenes of role reversal with Italian rhymes, including an armed woman watching her husband spinning wool, a king walking behind a peasant riding a horse, an ox guiding a plough drawn by 2 peasants, a child interrogating 3 professors, a fish catching a bird, a donkey washing a man's head, a goat playing a lute, etc.
Battista Parmensis (Italian, b. 1541) Il mondo alla riversa (The world in reverse), 1585. Engraving. Scenes of role reversal with Italian rhymes, including an armed woman watching her husband spinning wool, a king walking behind a peasant riding a horse, an ox guiding a plough drawn by 2 peasants, a child interrogating 3 professors, a fish catching a bird, a donkey washing a man’s head, a goat playing a lute, etc.
Unidentified (German). Patiens cornuta mulier. Die geduldige Hanreyin. (The patient cuckolded woman), 17th century. Engraving and etching. Satire on the cuckolded woman who married a much younger husband, with verses in Latin and German. An old woman, with horns growing out of her head, rides on a huge rooster. In the background to the left, her husband is wooing a younger woman, and to the right he is beating his complaining wife.
Unidentified (German). Patiens cornuta mulier. Die geduldige Hanreyin. (The patient cuckolded woman), 17th century. Engraving and etching. Satire on the cuckolded woman who married a much younger husband, with verses in Latin and German. An old woman, with horns growing out of her head, rides on a huge rooster. In the background to the left, her husband is wooing a younger woman, and to the right he is beating his complaining wife.
Unidentified (German). Untitled [Satire on men's fashion], Late 17th century. Engraving and etching. Satirical broadside on imported men's fashions. Two dandies in elaborate costumes are shown shaking hands. Behind them, a bearded angel with a hourglass on his head is about to cut them down with his scythe.
Unidentified (German). Untitled [Satire on men’s fashion], Late 17th century. Engraving and etching. Satirical broadside on imported men’s fashions. Two dandies in elaborate costumes are shown shaking hands. Behind them, a bearded angel with a hourglass on his head is about to cut them down with his scythe.
Unidentified (Italian). Il nuovo giuoco dell'oca (The new game of the goose), early 18th century. Hand-colored woodcut with letterpress. Board games, originating primarily among the upper classes, were gradually assimilated by the rest of society. This broadside has changed very little from earlier publications of this popular game. However, here the central figure, which in a similar 1650 version of the game consisted of an elegantly dressed, upper-middle class couple with their children, has given way to a grotesque dwarf riding a goose and brandishing a sword in one hand and a doomed bird in the other. The fact that this figure in the center has replaced the upper-class couple is indicative of the social change this game has undergone.
Unidentified (Italian). Il nuovo giuoco dell’oca (The new game of the goose), early 18th century. Hand-colored woodcut with letterpress. Board games, originating primarily among the upper classes, were gradually assimilated by the rest of society. This broadside has changed very little from earlier publications of this popular game. However, here the central figure, which in a similar 1650 version of the game consisted of an elegantly dressed, upper-middle class couple with their children, has given way to a grotesque dwarf riding a goose and brandishing a sword in one hand and a doomed bird in the other. The fact that this figure in the center has replaced the upper-class couple is indicative of the social change this game has undergone.
Unidentified (French). Le Fameux Lustucru, Seul et unique dans son genre pour repolir les têtes des femmes etc. (The famous Lustucru. Unique in his profession of refashioning wives’ heads), ca 1797. Hand-colored etching. The name "Lustucru" is probably a pun on the the phrase "l'eus-tu-cru?" or "would you have believed it?" The brightly colored etching shows him and his son in their workshop in Madagascar, hard at work refashioning the heads of itinerant women or wives, correcting their faults and making them prettier.
Unidentified (French). Le Fameux Lustucru, Seul et unique dans son genre pour repolir les têtes des femmes etc. (The famous Lustucru. Unique in his profession of refashioning wives’ heads), ca 1797. Hand-colored etching. The name “Lustucru” is probably a pun on the the phrase “l’eus-tu-cru?” or “would you have believed it?” The brightly colored etching shows him and his son in their workshop in Madagascar, hard at work refashioning the heads of itinerant women or wives, correcting their faults and making them prettier.
Gaspar Huberti (Belgian, 1619-1684). Untitled [The fight for the man's pants]. Hand-colored engraving. The eternal topic of the struggle for power between and among the sexes, and the question "who wears the pants" is one that provides occasion for humor as well as serious tensions.
Gaspar Huberti (Belgian, 1619-1684). Untitled [The fight for the man’s pants]. Hand-colored engraving. The eternal topic of the struggle for power between and among the sexes, and the question “who wears the pants” is one that provides occasion for humor as well as serious tensions.

Filed Under: Art, Digital Collections

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