abstract art | rectangles | memorial | poet | representation | world war | World War, 1914-1918
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Inventing Abstraction (The Museum of Modern Art, 2012-12-23 - 2013-04-15)A Room of Their Own - The Artists of Bloomsbury in American Collections (Nasher Museum of Art, 2008-12-18 - 2009-04-05)Revisiting Traditions [BAC 20th century painting & sculpture] (Yale Center for British Art, 2002-04-30 - 2005-05-18)The Art of Bloomsbury : Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant (Yale Center for British Art, 2000-05-20 - 2000-09-03)Doomed Youth The Poetry and the Pity of World War I (Yale Center for British Art, 1999-06-22 - 1999-09-26)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1998-05-01 - 1998-07-05)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Queensland Art Gallery, 1998-07-15 - 1998-09-06)This Other Eden : British Paintings from the Paul Mellon Collection at Yale (Art Gallery of South Australia, 1998-09-16 - 1998-11-15)
Publications:
Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977-1986 : Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1986, p. 14, no. 24, N590.2 .A7 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Richard Cork, A bitter truth, avant-garde art and the Great War , Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 1994, p. 79, N9150 C67 1994 (YCBA)Malcolm Cormack, Concise Catalogue of Paintings in the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1985, pp. 106-107, N590.2 .A83 (YCBA)Leah Dickerman, Inventing Abstraction, 1910-1925, how a radical idea changed modern art , The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2012, pp. 183, 187, no. 175, N6494.A2 D53 2012 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Diane Dillon, Looking and Difference in the Abstract Portraits of Charles Demuth and Duncan Grant, The Yale Journal of Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1998, pp. 39-51, PN80 Y35 (SML) Also available online (Orbis)Duncan Grant, a 90th birthday exhibition of paintings , Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 1975, p. 5, NJ18 G74 A12 1975 (YCBA)Elisabeth Fairman, Doomed youth, the poetry and the pity of the First World War : an exhibition organized by Elisabeth Fairman. , Yale Center for British Art, [New Haven, 1999, p. 12, NC1849 W27 F25 1999 (YCBA)Gretchen Gerzina, A room of their own : the Bloomsbury artists in American collections, , Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Ithaca, NY, 2008, p. 176, fig. 70, ND468.5.B55 R66 2008 (YCBA)Julia Marciari-Alexander, This other Eden : Paintings from the Yale Center for British Art, , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 1998, pp. 171, 186, no. 77, ND1314.3 Y36 1998 (YCBA)Paul Mellon's Legacy : a passion for British art [large print labels], , Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, v. 1, N5220 M552 P381 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Christopher Reed, Bloomsbury rooms, modernism, subculture, and domesticity , Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., 2004, pp. 154-55, NX543 R44 2004 + (YCBA)Duncan Robinson, Acquisitions : The First Decade 1977 - 1986, , Burlington Magazine, vol. 128, October 1986, p. 14, no. 24, N1 .B87 128:3 OVERSIZE (YCBA)Richard Shone, Bloomsbury portraits, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant, and their circle , Phaidon, Oxford, 1993, pp. 138-44, ND 468 S56 1993 (YCBA)Richard Shone, The art of Bloomsbury, Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant , Tate Publishing, London, 1999, p. 152, fig. 103, ND468.5 B55 S56 1999 + (YCBA)Richard Shone, The Charleston artists, Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and their friends , The Charleston Trust, [London ?], 1984, NJ18 B3907 S55 (YCBA)The Omega Workshops, alliance and enmity in English art 1911-1920. , Anthony d'Offay Gallery, London, 1984, no. 69, NK942 O45 O45 (YCBA)Douglas Blair Turnbaugh, Duncan Grant and the Bloomsbury Group, L. Stuart, Secaucus, N.J., 1987, p. 56, pl. 24, NJ18 G74 T87 (YCBA)Simon Watney, English post-impressionism, Studio Vista, London [Westfield, N.J.?], 1980, p. 98, ND468.5 P6 W38 (YCBA)Simon Watney, The art of Duncan Grant, Murray, London, 1990, p. 42, NJ18 G74 W27 1990 (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
The young poet Rupert Brooke, famed for his idealistic war sonnets, died at sea in April 1915 on his way to participate in the disastrous British assault on Gallipoli during the First World War. His death sent shockwaves through the Bloomsbury Group. "It is too horrible," wrote Duncan Grant, who had known Brooke since their school days: "May no other generation live under the cloud we have to live under." Grant, a pacifist, made this painting as an act of homage. It neither glorifies Brooke’s death nor overtly explores his remarkable life but adopts instead the colorful abstract style with which Grant was experimenting during this period. A piece of silver foil was originally attached to the bottom of the painting, hinting at Grant’s fondness for cubist collages. The arched black structure at the center of the work, meanwhile, is reminiscent of a Gothic funerary monument and suggests the search for a commemorative mode suitable for modern abstract art. Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2020