{"id":13390,"date":"2020-04-20T10:02:48","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T14:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/?p=13390"},"modified":"2023-03-31T13:14:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T17:14:43","slug":"the-unexpected-find","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/2020\/04\/20\/the-unexpected-find\/","title":{"rendered":"The Unexpected Find"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Corie Audette, Assistant Registrar\/Collections Manager, studying works in the collection with intern Gene Chen \u201922<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a Collections Management intern at Bates Museum of Art, I spent most of my time interacting directly with works of art: observing them, describing them, and cataloging them. For the majority of the time I spent in storage, I found myself surrounded by collections and archives of all mediums and forms. The working experience is very similar to my working process of throwing myself into artworks and seeing them closely, an immersive experience which often leads me to unexpected finds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recently I have been cataloging works by Anthony Gross, which came into the Museum\u2019s collection as part of a gift from Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs. Gross was an official war artist during World War II who produced etchings and paintings of English coastal defenses and troop training. After the war, Gross continued to work with printmaking, and produced many works describing the botany of the European countryside. Gross\u2019s works are exactly what I would describe as unexpected finds. His works are refreshing and lively at the first glance, while after seeing it closer and longer, more interesting details immerge. It could be a cricket hopping onto a piece of grass in an unnoticeable corner, or a variation of pattern of the leaves. Although only composed of lines and shapes, Gross\u2019s works are never dull or plain, but full of dynamic and energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Anthony Gross (British, 1905 \u2013 1984), Winter Grasses (Paysage D’Hiver)<\/em>, 1963, Etching on paper, 21 1\/8 x 26 1\/4 inches, Bates College Museum of Art, gift of Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs, 2019.2.12 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Anthony Gross (British, 1905 – 1984), Leo’s Vineyard<\/em>, 1974, Etching on paper, 12 7\/8 x 15 inches, Bates College Museum of Art, gift of Henry Isaacs and Donna Bartnoff Isaacs, 2019.2.14 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Working one day with Gross\u2019s works in storage, I stumbled upon a high contrast black-and-white photographic print, lying side by side with Gross\u2019s etching. Done in a completely different form and media, the print is in distinguish contrast with Gross\u2019s work. The print is a work of Ralph Gibson, a photographer I like and admire personally. Gibson\u2019s subject matter always contains an erotic and mysterious undertone achieved by his almost-surreal contextualization and construction of his subjects. Starting his career working with Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank (whom he is often compared with), Gibson developed a highly distinguished personal style: abstraction with a hint of erotica. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ralph Gibson (American, b. 1939), Untitled (from NUDE)<\/em>, 2013, Gelatin silver print, 14 x 11 inches, Bates College Museum of Art, gift of Elaine and Mark Connelly, 2014 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Ralph Gibson (American, b. 1939), Untitled (from MONO, p. 55)<\/em>, 2013, Archival pigment print, 22 x 17 inches, Bates College Museum of Art, gift of Elaine and Mark Connelly, 2014 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I\nwas surprised to see Gibson\u2019s work in our archive and even more surprised to\nrealize that Gibson\u2019s photography and Gross\u2019s etching have more vocabularies in\ncommon than I had imagined. To me, Gibson\u2019s work, especially the ones done in\nblack-and-white, have a mesmerizing power that stimulates its audience to see\nit with an attentive gaze, very much like the work of Gross. The longer I look\nat the photograph, the more balance and harmony I find between its subject and\ncomposition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsimilarity between Gross and Gibson\u2019s works is a typical example of what\ninspired me every day working at the Museum. The experience not only inspired\nme to be careful and precise with art but also to look at it in larger scopes.\nAlthough this semester and the internship ends in an unexpected way, I will for\nsure hold on to what I\u2019ve learned in the past months and look forward to where\nit will lead me ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gene Chen \u201822
Art & Visual Culture Major<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a Collections Management intern at Bates Museum of Art, I spent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1736,"featured_media":13818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[32,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iterns-blog","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1736"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13390"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14107,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13390\/revisions\/14107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/museum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}