Museums, Collections, Collectors

                                Museums, Collections, Collectors


        Before we get to our main discussion of the Museum Ritter in Germany, we will refer to some collectors and a few notable museums.
                                    Collectors
        Art collectors have a passion for art that is to their taste, have a keen eye, and often buy from developing artists at a reasonable price.
To our benefit, they often donate their collection to one or more museums. For that topic, see the webpage called: 10 Art Collectors from the Past, at Artland.com.
Selected Museums
        Among museums that have a good online presence and good lookup of works and artists there are: The National Gallery in Washington D.C., The Tate Modern in London, and Harvard Art Museums, which has a page called How Does the Collection Grow?
That page gives insight into their acquisition process.
                                        Museum Ritter
        The Museum Ritter, in the town of Waldenbuch in Germany, is not far from the city of Stuttgart. The museum is special in being a personal collection and a museum in one. The name Ritter is that of the chocolate company nearby and the collector is Marli Hoppe-Ritter.
        See an interior room Of the Museum Ritter with four works.

                        
        

                The round painting on the left is Diagonal Passage by the American artist Leon Polk Smith, much influenced by Mondrian. Next is a painting by Vera Molnar discussed later, then a smaller yellow work, then on the far wall, a grid painting by Rolf-Gunter Dienst.
        The museum is devoted to abstract art of a special kind. It is Geometric art that is based on the square. The museum website (just click the EN button for English version, but you can learn a little easy German by comparison) is well organized and offers an alphabetized list of artists in the collection. Each is a hot link to a photo of a work and a substantial, quality discussion of the work and artist.
            An aside: regarding the museum interior photo, notice the white walls and the generous spacing between paintings. That presentation has come to be called the white cube. See the article -- How the White Cube Came to Dominate the Art World at artsy.net.
            Museum Ritter also puts on exhibits of works by artists from their collection and elsewhere. There is an archive side bar for seeing past exhibitions in a lively visual manner. The exhibition current in December 2021 has title: No Day Without a Line. We will look at two featured works.

                                         Francois Morellet
            See Confrontation number 2 by Francois Morellet, made with acrylic paint and pencil.
                    



            Frequently the works you remember are the elegantly simple ones that are thought provoking. In this case there are three changes all at once --- an abrupt change in direction, change from straight to curved, and change from thick to thin. We use the word line here more as path, not necessarily a straight line. The fact that 11 lines all change the same way magnifies the effect, like precision swimmers or members of a marching band who all change direction at once.
The circular arcs are drawn from a center point below the figure, down roughly 2/3 the length of the side. 

             Morellet's works are usually made based upon some rule or by some chance mechanism. I don't see that here but the arcs have a broad sweeping character similar to the straight thin lines in his other work Confrontation 1, which you can find by google image search. If the arcs were drawn with the bottom vertex as center, they would not have that sweeping character.
            In any case, note the tips of the straight lines are on a vertical line. Since the arcs are thin and faint you can notice them or not, hence emphasizing the triangular shape of the acrylic group of stripes.
                                        Serina Amrein
        Now, see the work Record 2 by Serina Amrein, made of red pigment dust on cotton fabric.


                

            How was this work made? It seemed quite a challenge until seeing another work of hers below. The heavy rope is impregnated with pigment dust then somehow thrown at the wall thus leaving a pigment image transferred from the rope.


                    

            You see, of course that Amrein's work Record 2 is made of many straight lines.
            Maybe you know of the technique used in construction called -- snapping a line. One use of snapping is to establish straight and level lines to guide nailing shingles to the outside of a house. A chalked, usually blue, string line is held taught with each end knotted around a nail. The worker pulls the line perpendicularly away from the wall surface. When released the string leaves a nice straight chalk line - pigment trail - on the wall.
            So, for a work like Amrein's you could make a wooden outside frame to fit closely around a framed fine-weave canvas lying flat and fastened onto a table. Set nails in the outside frame at the ends of the desired line. Then for each line, chalk the string with the desired red color pigment dust, tie its ends to the two nails, then snap a line. Of course, you have many lines to snap and you have to plan the entire composition and execute it cleanly.
                                Permanent Collection

                                    Vera Molnar
            Now we will look at a few items from the permanent collection. See the acrylic painting by the French artist Vera Molnar called 9 carres disperses par le vent du large, that is, 9 squares scattered by the sea breeze.


                        

            Notice some squares go off the edge of the canvas. That makes you feel the arrangement continues. The darkening at the overlap gives a convincing sense of translucent squares. The word "scattered" in the title seems to indicate some randomness. How random or not do you find the arrangement? Why?
                                        Martin Willing
            See next a standing work by Martin Willing. It is taller than a person and made of stainless steel plate, claimed to be all one piece.


                                    

            I think you can see that each horizontal cross section is square. The plate makes many 90 degree bends. Rather than words, try to closely scrutinize. Notice, looking from a certain direction we see vertical faces repeating regularly.
            In a sense, in outline, it is an upside down pyramid. Was that a good choice rather than an upright conventional pyramid? Why? What kind of lighting would be best for this work, one light, two lights, diffuse? Why?
            In the USA, If you like the idea of a museum of abstract art outside of big cities, consider The DIA foundation in Beacon NY, 60 miles north of N.Y.C. or Mass MoCA (museum of contemporary art) in North Adams, Massachusetts, north east of Albany NY. Both are in former factories and can display some very large works.